The Boys of McKinley House
by Dakki
Summary: Now Jack was resting his head beside David’s, leaning forward, and kissing David on the mouth and now David was thinking, clearly, plainly, I am in love with Jack Kelly, and there’s nothing in the world I can do about it.
1. Facts and Figures

The Boys of McKinley House

Chapter One—Facts and Figures

-

At 8:52 in the morning, Sunday, September fourth, aboard Pan Am flight 929 from Kennedy International Airport to a nameless airport in Portland, Oregon (estimated time of arrival 11:41 AM, Pacific Standard Time), David Jacobs was flying alone for the first time in his life. The plane had reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, with a ground speed of 537 miles per hour and an outside temperature of -57 degrees Fahrenheit; ice crystals could already be observed forming on some of the passenger windows. David had been in the air for eleven minutes, with five and a half hours left to go, which translated into about three hundred and thirty minutes, or 19,800 seconds, if you wanted an even more exact measurement. He wouldn't be coming home again for nine months; how many seconds that was, he wasn't sure.

He wanted to keep track of all these details because, at the age of sixteen years, three months, and twelve days, very little had happened to him, and he wanted to make sure he remembered everything that had.

He had never gotten blind drunk, or crashed a car, or even driven a car, as there was no point in getting your license when you live in a place like New York, anyway. He had never slept out under the stars, hitchhiked down the New Jersey Turnpike, looked down the barrel of a gun, or danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight. He had never (as his friend Dutchy Pulaski had) woken to find himself in a garbage dump somewhere in the Meadowlands, tripping out of his mind, and, with no idea how he had gotten there or how he would find his way home, lain on a pile of coffee grounds, lemon rinds, and Coney Island whitefish, and watched the nuclear sunrise. He had never fallen in love, or kissed a girl, or even been a member of the raincoat brigade at one of the X-rated movie theaters that lined the streets downtown, including one two blocks from his house that had shown _Deep Throat _every single night for the last five years.

At sixteen years, three months and twelve days, the greatest thing he had to show for his time on earth was a record of dental hygiene almost as perfect as his grades, a gift for telling teachers just what they wanted to hear, and long string of near-flawless test scores stretching back to his third grade ERB's.

It was this last that had allowed him to end up where he was today. The year before, he had done very well on the PSAT, and in addition to letters from college telling him that you were never too young to think about a higher education, he had also been sent information from Caldwell Academy.

The first time he ever heard of the school was when he read the return address on the thin white envelope that arrived one afternoon in November: The Caldwell Academy of St. Helens, Oregon, Thaw and Rosemary Hall. He tried saying it a few times standing there next to the mailbox in his hat and gloves: Caldwell Academy, Thaw and Rosemary, Rosemary and Thaw. To someone whose father was a barber, it had a nice ring to it.

Printed on the front of the envelope, in the same excitable imperative that he read on signs at the grocery store down the street, proclaiming things like "Buy Kornblatt's Brisket!" or "Sale All Evap Milk Must GO!" were these words:

Get a First-Rate Education!

He would never have imagined that, ten months later, he would actually be following through on their advice.

Inside was a letter from the headmaster, saying that, due to information the school had received from the College Board, he, David Jacobs, seemed like a perfect candidate for admission to the "vibrant and diverse environment that is Caldwell Academy." He also said that he _could _try to explain what Caldwell was like, but David would never truly understand until he had experienced it for himself—until he had discussed the second battle of Manassas over scrambled eggs in the dining hall with his history professor, sat in the Wilbur McKinley library reading Nietzsche for his Intellectual History class, or watched the sun set over the Columbia River. Which didn't sound all that bad to David. So he sent away for a viewbook and more information, as the letter suggested, not quite knowing what he wanted from it, only that it would never in a million years be something he could possibly hope to be a part of, and wisely choosing to ignore the fact that an application would be sent to him as well.

The Caldwell Academy of St. Helens, Oregon, Thaw and Rosemary hall. Founded in 1910 by two brothers, graduates of Exeter and then Princeton, who wished to bring a boys' preparatory school to their home in the Pacific Northwest that would be as fine as any eastern counterpart. Coeducational in 1959, current student body 595. Located thirty miles north of Portland, on five hundred verdant acres overlooking the town of St. Helens, home to over four hundred types of tree and shrub. In the letter enclosed with his application materials, he was advised to come for his interview in early March, when the lilacs were in their fullest bloom.

His mother found the application and viewbook two weeks later, when she was doing her monthly search through his bedroom for dirty magazines. (His sister Sarah kept a copy of _The Communist Manifesto _hidden under her mattress, but there was nothing they could do about that. Sarah, Mrs. Jacobs had come to accept, was just the bad seed of the family.) But instead of _Hustler _or _Penthouse_—which, God forbid, she still would have been able to understand—she found a glossy booklet proclaiming that "Caldwell Academy is the finest and oldest preparatory school on the west coast, and prides itself on a history of dynamic educators and individual attention to the student."

David came home that afternoon to find his mother sitting at the kitchen table, sobbing over pictures of teenagers cheering at lacrosse games, giving speeches at their graduations, and having animated discussions in class.

"David," she wailed, "is this what you've been looking at every night? Is this why you've been losing so much sleep?"

"Well, um, Mom, you see, that's a funny story—you know Dutchy's new girlfriend, Margo? Well, her cousin—"

"Your father may not know when you're lying, David, but I do. Tell me the truth."

"I want to go there, Mom," he said, suddenly realizing that this was the truth as he knew it.

"You know we can't afford this. Your father can only cut so much hair."

"I know, but—"

"And what about your _sister_, David? Sarah's a communist! How do you think she'll take it if you start going to some hoity-toity prep school?"

"Actually, I thought that might kind of be incentive for you."

"It is," she said, drying her eyes. "But that's beside the point. You and I both know we can't even begin to pay for something like this."

"Well, actually," he said, picking up the application forms and beginning to flip through them, "they accept on a need-blind basis. And once you're in, you can get a lot of financial aid; all we have to do is send in our tax forms, and I can get some scholarships too, probably. After I did so well on the PSAT they made me a national merit scholar, and my grades are good enough." By the time he stopped to catch his breath, he had nearly convinced himself. "I did the math. If we're lucky, we'll only have to pay eight hundred dollars a year."

David's mother closed her eyes a moment, thought about her communist insurgent daughter, and then thought about her son; how he ended up as smart as he was she had no idea. She thought about how he had never done less than the best he or anyone else could possibly do, had never met a subject he couldn't master. She thought about his fifth grade victory in the state spelling bee with "obstreperous"; about all the Saturdays they had spent in the planetarium, at the museum of natural history, looking at the moth wings and bird skeletons, all those rainy afternoons in the Metropolitan Museum. She thought about how, after his father made a desperate attempt to get him interested in anything normal and boy-like by taking him to games and quizzing him nightly on the history of baseball, David had responded memorizing the names, number, and batting averages of every person who had ever played for the New York Yankees all the way back to when the Boston Red Sox were the Boston Bean-Eaters and Italians were ethnics and ethnics weren't even allowed on any of the teams. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that this was what her son had been waiting for for his entire life.

"Fine," she said, looking up at him. "We'll think about it. Don't get it into your head that we're promising you anything, though. And you'd better get all the financial aid you can, because I can tell you we're not paying for all this. Now. Would you like some cocoa?"

They didn't get in for eight hundred dollars, of course. They got in for free. David won a full ride for a year; even Sarah managed to rationalize her misgivings by deciding that David's best chance of toppling the bourgeoisie was by working from the inside, so she could still hug her brother goodbye at the airport, and wish him well.

And so it happened that David S. Jacobs, aged sixteen years, three months, and twelve days, came to be on an airplane by himself for the first time in his young life, and also, for the first time in his young life, to be flying somewhere other than Florida. It was the first thing he would do in his junior year that he had never done before. It would not, by any means, be the last.

-

**Author's Note: **And so it happened that Dakki, who in the coming year was going to go through her last year of high school at her own west coast prep school, not to mention applying to college, decided to start a fic, just in case she had any foreseeable free time in the next nine months that needed to be filled up. And, as always, it is completely unbiographical.

Plus, Dalton's looking forward to finally reading a fic set in a world he understands—coming from Welton, it's been hard for this annoying yet semi-cute preppie muse to adjust to reading all these stories about newsboys. He always says things like "why doesn't Race ever have to worry about his Latin homework?" and I say "Race doesn't have Latin homework" and he says "how can someone not have Latin homework?" Et cetera. So Dalton's really happy. Of course he won't take it well when he finds out how many roommates at Caldwell end up hooking up—

DALTON: WHAT?

So anyway, here's yet another fic to be added to the rainbow selection of newsies-in-present-day. There will be slash, there will be het, there will be Latin homework, and just to lower the stress level for me, there will be a very small casting call. I've actually planned this more than I have anything else in the past—I got the first inkling of an idea for it last summer—but I need characters to play students at Caldwell, and its rival school, Reingard-Mandler, townies from St. Helens (which is a real little town in Oregon), David's friends in New York, assorted relatives of the other newsies, and so on and so forth.

I can't guarantee that everyone will get a sizable part, but everyone who sends in information will make an appearance. If you're interested tell me in your review or email me at ElisabethRaincoat (at) Gmail (dot) com, and I'll send you the casting call as soon as I can.

DALTON: I'M NOT GAY! AND REVIEW!

…What he said. And if you could possibly include Dalton's masculinity and hotness on a scale of 1 to 10, we would all appreciate it around here.


	2. Problems with Socks

The Boys of McKinley House  
Chapter Two—Problems with Socks

-

Something was wrong. The room had been quiet for only a moment, but it was a moment that lasted a fraction more than it should have. The silence would go one for hours, for days; it would never end, not in this lifetime. David had been in the Dean of Students' offices for exactly fourteen seconds, and already he had said something wrong.

"I'm sorry," Mr. Snyder said, an unreadable expression on his face. "My hearing must be going. I could have sworn you said you ate babies."

"A-ha," David laughed uneasily. Snyder didn't join in. "Well, you see, ah, my friend Dutchy—my friend Stef and I, we worked in the haunted house in this carnival out in Brooklyn for most of August, and I, um, was a zombie."

"I see." Snyder, who at the moment was very absorbed in making sure all the pens on his ink blotter were parallel to each other, did not look up. "So you ate babies."

"Yes. But I was only acting. Heh."

Smiling tightly, Snyder leaned back in his chair and began to flip through the file that had been sitting on his desk. "Well, from your application, Mr. Jacobs, it appears you've held several interesting jobs in the last few years. You've been a…hair sweeper in a barbershop, you've worked driving a Mr. Softee truck, you've been a fact checker at _Teen Communist Magazine_—" here, Snyder paused to raise an eyebrow.

"I, ah, got that job through my sister."

"You've been a dishwasher, a waiter, an aquarium salesman, a newspaper delivery boy…as well as a half-dozen other things—essentially, you haven't been out of a job since the seventh grade. Tell me," he said, "why is that?"

"I needed the money," said David.

Something about the expression on Snyder's face told him that the Dean of Students had never heard that answer before. Later on, David would learn that, among the wealthy, "money" was an ugly word, like "gonorrhea" or "hemorrhoids," and one that they tried to avoid in every day conversation. But today he was still a wet-behind-the-ears aquarium salesman, and could not have known any better.

"Well," Snyder said uneasily, "I'm sure you're…very eager to see the grounds, at any rate. Since you've transferred from another school, we've assigned you a fellow student to show you around this afternoon. A…" he peered through his bifocals at one of the papers on his desk. "…Ah yes. A Mr. Higgins, I presume—the son of one of our math instructors over at Rosemary Hall. Yes. He's, um…quite a character." Snyder coughed loudly. "At any rate, he'll get you acquainted with the campus, introduce you to some people, show you the ropes, if you will. And…" he paused, at a loss, but knowing he had to say one more thing before he could shake David's hand and push him out the door. Suddenly, it dawned on him; he smiled the strangely unsettling smile that David would become so familiar with over the next nine months. "…And I am sure that you will be a wonderful addition to the vibrant and diverse community that is Caldwell Academy."

-

Every year, only a handful of students were taken it at Caldwell on full scholarships. This year, there had been five, and Racetrack was lucky enough to know, before even the first day of classes, the identity of one of them.

The scholarship students' identities were kept completely confidential, and for those who had been going there since their freshman years, for those whose brothers had gone there, whose fathers and cousins and grandparents had gone there, to guess their identities. For the first few weeks of classes it was always at the backs of their minds, when they were in chemistry class, in morning chapel, when they were sitting on the john. Racetrack always started a pool, and usually, he more than broke even. He had been around Caldwell since he was five, when his father started teaching math at the girls' school; even though his family wasn't wealthy, he had been around the wealthy his whole life, and was better than anyone else at spotting a scholarship student a mile away.

Since he was a faculty brat, he always got roped into touring new students. It had happened this year the same way it had happened every year since the beginning of time, like clockwork, two weeks before school started: he and Izzy had been sitting at the table eating Fruit Brute cereal and reading the Sunday comics, when out of nowhere their father waltzed into the kitchen and announced, with no preamble:

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

They looked up from Brenda Starr and stared at him blankly, as they did every year.

"I _said_, in my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice—"

"What advice would that be, Doc?" Racetrack said at last.

Dr. J. Higgins smiled. "'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.' Be sure to phone the admissions office today to see if there are any new students this year you can tour on orientation day, son. Isobel, you'll be managing our mathletes team again." And with that, he wandered off, cheerfully humming what sounded like the theme song from _Alfred Hitchcock Presents_.

"Ah, summer," Izzy sighed.

"When a young man's fancy turns to plagiarization of _The Great Gatsby_. Say, Iz," Racetrack said thoughtfully, "you think you'll get to do a charity to one of those nice mathletes who's never seen a girl up close and take him to the spring formal, and then stand out on the porch until after curfew holding hands for a half an hour? Again?"

To which she had no better answer than to upend her bowl of Fruit Brute over his head.

So Izzy was stuck in the lobby of the new math, science, and technology building, polishing calculators and handing out trigonometry textbooks, and Racetrack was stuck with David S. Jacobs, who (if what he had read in a confidential file in the admissions office was correct) was born on April 22nd, had transferred from P.S. 118 on Cherry Street with an unweighted G.P.A. of 4.67, was allergic to peanuts, and was the recipient of a Marshall Taylor grant, Caldwell's most prestigious scholarship. He was, essentially, here on a free ride.

Racetrack would, essentially, have figured this out within minutes of meeting him, even if he hadn't known beforehand. There were certain telltale signs you could always look for in a scholarship student: used books, cheap shoes, uniform clothes that didn't fit quite right—blazers that were tight in the shoulders, pants that were just a fraction too short, exposing ankles and socks when they should have fallen easily over the tops of the wearer's shoes. Expressing any degree of awe at their surroundings was also bad—the only acceptable attitude for a rich boy was eternal indifference toward everything surrounding him. But the worst giveaway of all was talking about money, in almost any direct capacity. Racetrack knew just as well as anyone else at Caldwell: what you want, you think about, and what you have, you ignore.

Race could have told you things about David's socks. David S. Jacobs, allergic to peanuts, aged sixteen, was tall and earnest, eager to please, and seemed constantly astonished even to be at the school. Seeing David for the first time, Racetrack thought that he might just be Izzy's next date to the spring formal.

But at the same time, and despite himself, he liked him an awful lot.

-

David first met the math instructor's son on the lawn in front of the admissions building. He walked out the door and down the front steps, past the eglantine and rhododendron that shaded the walkway, and emerged into the sunlight to see a boy close to his own age standing astride an ancient Schwinn, white shirtsleeves rolled up with rumpled perfection, eyes hidden by a pair of wayfarer Ray-Bans. He wasn't handsome, exactly—he was short, and his sharp features had yet to reach a compromise with the oddly soulful brown eyes David would see as soon as the other boy took his sunglasses off—but he carried himself with such ease that it was hard to tell at first. David was suddenly conscious of his blazer's frayed cuffs, and wondered why, of every sock in the world of socks, he had chosen this morning to put on black wool ones, with dark blue clocks.

And so he was thinking very hard about a rainbow spectrum of _other socks_—dress socks, sweat socks, socks with spots, the knee-high gym socks with red stripes along the tops that Sarah wore constantly—when the boy caught sight of him, smiled an unreadable smile, and reached out a hand to shake.

"David S. Jacobs?"

"Uh, yeah. And you're…"

"Racetrack Higgins. I'm showing you around today," he said.

"Your first name is Racetrack?"

Racetrack took off his sunglasses, folded them, and put him in his pocket. "It's become preferable to my first name, yeah." He paused, looking David up and down. "So. You think you're gonna be a 'wonderful addition to the vibrant and diverse community that is Caldwell Academy,' David S. Jacobs?"

"Does _everyone _here say that?"

"Yes," Racetrack said seriously. "Of course, the secret is, we're about as diverse as lime soda. Wonderbread, you know? You're not supposed to have that figured out just yet, of course. But it's okay, though, we make up for it with our fabulous sense of social responsibility." He paused. "Would you happen to be vibrant and diverse, David S. Jacobs?"

"I'm Jewish," he said. "I'm not sure if that counts. Call me David."

The first time David had seen Racetrack smile, it was cool, utterly unapproachable; now he grinned. "Before you know it you'll be up onstage at our diversity assembly explaining Yom Kippur. David."

He didn't know quite how to respond to that. There was a lull in the action; Racetrack looked at him carefully, for just a moment too long. Then, he unfolded his sunglasses, put them carefully back on, and said, with a laugh that David wouldn't fully understand the meaning of for weeks: "come and meet my sister Isobel."

-

On the way to the math, science, and technology building at the far end of campus, where Isobel was spending the afternoon handing out math books and TI-1205's, Race and David had passed three girls who Racetrack introduced as "Benny Kittridge, Dayle Chase, and Endy Dalton—queens of Rampion house." They all wore cable knit socks, cashmere sweaters, and pearls fastened at their throats and ears, and were led, apparently, by the one named Benny, an immaculately pretty blonde who had paused for just a moment to appraise David with her cool blue eyes before she passed him by.

"You've got a minute left to fall in love," Racetrack whispered in his ear

But if Benny, Dayle, and Endy were the most beautiful girls at Caldwell, and the ones everyone wanted either to screw or screw over (as Racetrack so eloquently put it), then Isobel Higgins was God's gift to geeks, and that was almost as good. From a certain point of view, it was better—she never had to do math homework for the rest of her life and, if she played her cards right, could marry someone who would eventually be on the cover of Scientific American for solving an insolvable theorem, and all thanks, in part, to her.

(She pictured it just perfectly, lying in bed at night with her trig book clutched against her beating heart.

ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER: And how was it that that critical breakthrough in your work on this theorem—the same that has baffled and driven to madness so many other mathematicians—came about?

MR. ISOBEL HIGGINS: Well, I was in bed with my beautiful wife one morning, when suddenly, something about the adorable way her nose is slightly bigger on one side clicked with an article I had read the night before—and I thought "by God! That's it! It all connects to the _Taniyama__-Shimura conjecture! _And I realized that all I had to do was count sets of Galois representations associated with the semi-stable elliptic curves, thereby showing that they and modular forms are the same!—So I did, and I worked it out that very morning, after putting on my pants, and then my wife and I shared an omelet to celebrate. I believe it was Denver, or perhaps Spanish. Which one has bell peppers in it?

ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER: And thus, mathematical history has been made.)

When Racetrack first led David into the lobby of the math, science, and technology building, at first he couldn't even find his sister; the room was too crowded with boy-mathematicians. Boy-mathematicians sitting on the stairway that led to the physics labs, showing off their calculators to each other; boy-mathematicians picking at their braces; boy-mathematicians greedily skimming through their new textbooks, seeing if they could already answer the hardest problems; boy-mathematicians putting on their mathletes sweaters, in the Caldwell colors, blue and green; boy-mathematicians arguing about who, in an ultimate mathematician wresting showdown, would beat who: Ken Ribet or Marshall Harvey Stone.

And, sitting next to Isobel, behind a folding table piled with textbooks, calculators, Q-tips, notepads, and a tiny black-and-white TV that was playing what looked like _The Electric Company_, was the most handsome, relatively normal boy-mathematician in the room, both the most incandescently brilliant math genius at Caldwell, and the only one who wasn't madly in love with Isobel. His name was Bengt Odin Gustafson, but he was known by almost everyone as Kid Blink, because of the eye patch he had worn ever since a tragic lawn dart accident when he was seven.

Blink was talking to Isobel, his feet up on the table, doing his reckless, desperate genius act—Bruce Springsteen, if Bruce Springsteen had ever gotten letters from Princeton begging him to leave high school early and resume his studies on their campus. "Did you know," he was saying, "that mathematicians make the best lovers?"

Isobel did a good job of blushing and acting like she hadn't heart this about fifty-eight times before. "They do?"

"Well, naturally. You see," he said, "with them, it isn't just chance—they can calculate everything, angles, friction, heat…" he reached out and took Isobel's hand in his, staring deeply into her eyes, and this time she really did blush: all the way to the tips of her comely ears. They looked at each other a moment, transfixed, the outside world disappearing, and then—

Racetrack cleared his throat. "WHY HELLO, BLINK, WOULD YOU MIND TAKING YOUR HANDS OFF MY LITTLE SISTER?"

They sprung apart, and Kid Blink, flustered—a rare enough emotion for him, David would learn—attempted to orchestrate his escape.

"Well," he said, "I hate to leave so suddenly—hi Race—but I promised Professor Salt that I'd help her with those frogs and everything, so, um—" Blink clattered out of his seat and edged up the staircase. "And, hey, I'll be seeing you, Iz. Remember to floss." And he fled.

Isobel Higgins stared at her brother with an expression so livid that it transcended the meaning of the word _hate_. She took a few very deep breaths.

"Hi, Iz," he said meekly.

"Hello, Racetrack," she said. "Who's your friend?"

"This is David. He's new this year." Racetrack clapped a hand on David's shoulder. "David, this is my sister Isobel. She's a sophomore. She's trying to date all the boys in BC Calc before she graduates."

"I'm doing it alphabetically," Isobel said, picking up a wet Q-tip and beginning to clean between the buttons of an Amelia Scientific.

"She's halfway through the G's. Say, David, do you like math?"

David had a feeling he would need to choose his words carefully. "I like it okay," he said at last. "I'm more into history, to be honest."

"Ah," said Racetrack, glancing over at his sister, who was making a point of ignoring him, and looking just a little too relieved. "Well, let me show you to Scott House then—that's where all your English and humanities classes will be. You're taking Professor Kloppman's class, right?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, anyway, let's go. Say 'Goodbye,' Izzy."

"Goodbye, Izzy."

"Ha. Isn't she a character?"

"You've got a whole family full of them."

"Y'know, David…I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

-

And so it happened that David S. Jacobs spent the afternoon touring the campus of Caldwell Academy, and at times was so amazed by its beauty and utter separation from every school he had ever seen, and so astonished that he really was _here_, that he even forgot to worry about his socks. For the first half of the afternoon, he tried to act as unimpressed as he could, worried that Race might not think much of him if he didn't; for the second half, he didn't even bother. He would find out later, of course, that Racetrack's dissolute charm that day was only an act put on for people who didn't know him well; Jack Kelly was the one who had perfected that role, and he wouldn't arrive on campus until everyone else had unpacked their bags and said a tearful goodbye to their parents.

So Racetrack was free, at least for an afternoon, to be TheCoolGuy, and David, once he allowed himself to finally stop caring about his socks and everything else that was wrong with him, was free to look, and look, and look.

Later that night, when he went over the afternoon in his head, he could come up with few real memories that fixed themselves in his mind. The afternoon had ended up an overwhelming series of images and sounds, some pictures frozen with perfect clarity: the view of the mountains in the distance, and the town of St. Helens all spread out below (Caldwell was a school on a hill), the bell tower rising from the center of commons, shafts of golden sunlight slanting down through the windows in the great hall, the wilting sunflowers in the vegetable garden hidden behind one of the houses at Rosemary, plum and apple trees heavy with fruit, daisies in a field, pretty girls with daisy chains in their hair…and everywhere, all across the school's campus, trees like he had never seen before, big, majestic. David asked Race TheCoolGuy what they were.

Racetrack looked at him, bemused. "Douglas firs."

"Douglas firs…"

Racetrack talked the entire time, pausing only for breath—not for any real reason, especially, but because that was just the way he talked: incessantly. After a while, David more or less stopped listening, but he drifted in and out enough to find out what he needed to know.

Caldwell was divided into two separate schools: Thaw and Rosemary Hall. It had started out as a boys' preparatory academy, and merged with Rosemary Hall, a girls' finishing school in Astoria, in 1959; Caldwell's boys' school adopted the name of Thaw, after a wealthy benefactor made rich by timber. Caldwell was co-ed in the sense that boys and girls were on the same campus, and shared everything—dances, dining halls, plays, and photocopiers—except for housing and classes, after the headmaster of Caldwell at the time of the merger decided that "as little distraction as possible from nubile young temptresses will be the only means by which we can keep our boys focused on their studies and their growth from mere youths to splendid, clear-thinking young men." The same headmaster was later found sitting behind his lovely cherrywood desk with a nubile young temptress's head in his lap; she was a sophomore at Rosemary, and had, he claimed, seduced him.

He was, of course, fired. The girl went home to her family in Minneapolis, made independently wealthy by the school's efforts to silence her, and Arthur McKinley, who had taught History to the boys of Caldwell Academy since its founding in 1910, was hired in the shamed man's place. The desk was replaced with a nice oak roll-top, but Caldwell would forever remain more troubled with sexual scandal than any other school that could be ranked alongside it; whether this was due to a curse brought upon it by the guilty headmaster or simply because the Kelly family sent all their five children there, no one would ever know

McKinley served until his death at the age of eighty-six, when, out to dinner one night, he laughed out loud at a joke his friend was telling and died of a heart attack. Even years later, when David was starting his first year at Caldwell and the last remaining Kelly boy had one year left before he graduated, McKinley was still thought of as the greatest headmaster the school had ever known. He served as beacon of wisdom, kindness, dignity, and forthrightness for all of the school to aspire to; the current headmaster, Joseph Pulitzer, who was neither dignified nor kind nor looked nearly as handsome with mustaches as Arthur McKinley had, was always a little touchy about this, but managed to hide it relatively well.

In Thaw, the boys' school of Caldwell Academy, there were eight residential houses: Northrup, Canfield, Medford, Maryhill, Colton, Hotchkiss, Irving, and McKinley. David Jacobs had a room in McKinley house.

-

David didn't know quite what he was expecting his room to look like, but whatever he was thinking of, it wasn't what he saw when Racetrack swung open the door. It was a fraction smaller than his bedroom at home, sparsely furnished: scarred oak floors, twin beds, sloping white walls, late-afternoon sunlight pouring through the skylights, and two little roll-top desks, full of drawers and slats and pigeonholes, the perfect place, he thought, to read and study and learn. He loved it on sight.

Seated at one of these desks was the boy he would live with for the next nine months. The tabletop, the floor beside him, every available surface was piled high with the books he would have to read in the next year for his classes: _Beyond Good and Evil_, _Candide, Beowulf, Civilization & Its Discontents, The Iliad, Notes From the Underground, Illness as Metaphor, The Trial and Death of Socrates._ And in the middle of all this, leaning back in his desk chair, legs crossed, was Mush Meyers, reading _Highlights_.

Mush looked up, completely unembarrassed, and grinned. "Don't you just hate it when you can't find the last difference?"

Racetrack cracked a grin. "David S. Jacobs, Mush Meyers, Mush Meyers, David S. Jacobs. Dave, Mush was new last year, too."

"Really?" David asked, surprised. Mush looked as comfortable in his surroundings as if he had grown up here.

"Yeah. Did you meet Odie?"

"Odie?"

"Oh, sorry—Kid Blink. Blond hair, smartest kid in the math department, wears a patch?"

"Um, yes. For a minute."

"Yeah, we grew up together, in Winnetka, Illinois. We were scouted for Caldwell when we were sophomores. He came for math, I came for lacrosse."

David was overwhelmed, for just a moment, with a feeling of utter joy. There were at least two other real people at this school, people who had felt as much like foreigners as he did now. People who had had problems with their socks.

He would find out, of course, over the next few months, that there were many more friends to be found in McKinley house, let alone in all of Caldwell Academy, and the town of St. Helens itself.

There was the senior boy across the hall, son of a Savannah defense lawyer, who had been Blanche DuBois in a past life, and was nicknamed Skittery due to his impressive history of mental breakdowns dating from age fifteen. There was Skittery's best friend, who everyone called Snitch, son of a junior senator from Iowa, owner of the largest front teeth David had ever seen, and one of the few genuinely kind and unassuming people at the school. There was Roger Simon, known as Specs, who, with all his worrying and nervous tendencies, had been roomed with Kid Blink, the laid back boy-genius of Caldwell Academy, who was on a lifelong quest to force him to loosen up and have some fun. There was Margaret Larsen, the ex Broadway chorus girl and star of such underground classics as _Biker Babes from Zombietown_ and _Lust-Demon from Outer Space!_, who taught drama and voice and was in charge of the annual school musical. There was Sylvy Golino, the daughter of Professor Golino, the religioninstructor at Thaw, who had something important to tell Racetrack. There was Colleen DuPont, who would be a source of endless torment for David, but would dispense of the most luminous wisdom only when he needed it. There was Jack Kelly, who would affect him more deeply than anyone else he had ever known.

...And a hundred other people in between, who would shape his experience in this unfamiliar place, and if he did not grow from a mere youth into a splendid, clear-thinking young man in his time at Caldwell, then he grew more over the course of that year than any other time in his life: the year he was a boy of McKinley House.

-

**Author's Note—**

I only realized after I had uploaded the prologue that "The Boys of McKinley House" sounds very much like the title of a gay porn movie. But really, that's fitting, because in some capacities it kind of will be. I had forgotten, before I started this chapter, how hard it is for me to write anything longer than about a thousand words, mainly because I have an attention span the size of a sesame seed. But I had a lot of fun with it, and I had a huge amount of positive feedback, too, so that kept me going.

DALTON: That and, like, an entire jar of peanut butter. One of these days, Dakki, that fast metabolism of yours is going to slow down, and THEN where will you be? Because I'm certainly not letting you borrow my thighmaster.

((sigh)) So, at present count, Blink is a math genius, Medda is Elvira, mistress of the dark, and Racetrack wears his sunglasses at night. I've gotten all your profiles except for a couple and I've figured out where each character is going to be placed, and a few of you found your way into the first chapter; everyone else will be introduced in the near to fairly near future.

And now, Dalton and I are going to do some Jane Fonda.

DALTON: And REVIEW!

Make it burn.

-

**Shout outs! **

(So, about half of this chapter ended up being the fic, and half of it was shout-outs, because I've never gotten so many reviews in my _life_, and I wanted to thank you guys, so somehow keeping it short and sweet eluded me. Ah well.)

**Rubix**

DALTON: ((whimpers)) Negative four?

((high-fives Rubix))

**Oxymoronic Alliteration**

HE IS NOT AN ELEVEN HE IS NOT AN ELEVEN HE IS NOT AN ELEVEN! ((bursts into tears))

**Sweet Sapphola Oil**

You know, it's gotten to the point where whenever I hear the phrase "cherry picker" my mind goes "Sapphy!"—which may not be entirely healthy, but what are you gonna do?

DALTON: And if you need someone to play bongo drums for you, Sapph, I'll be MORE than glad to help.

…He heard Kennedy had a thing for musicians. Basically, since then, my life has been a living hell. But when is it never?

**Klover**

DALTON: FOR YOUR INFORMATION, ONLY EXTREMELY BUTCH GUYS CAN PULL OFF SWEATER VESTS. ((bursts into tears))

**Platy**

You have officially lost ALL your Little Foot privileges.

**Unknown-Dreams**

Dude, Sarah was SO a communist in that movie. All her political activism and feminist leanings…and David? Totally a violent criminal in the making. The way he said "I'll get the knife!" …((shudders))

**Shaturday**

I'm sorry I made you go out with mathletes.

DALTON: She really is. She's been crying.

And I'm sorry I made you polish calculators.

KNOX: She really is. We had to eat a whole pint of Cherry Garcia together to assuage her guilt.

But I figure that being Racetrack's incestual sister somehow makes up for it.

DALTON: It really does.

KNOX: Although the damage done to my thighs will be irreparable…

SHUT UP, DALTON, YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE MADE IT INTO THE BALLET, ANYWAY.

KNOX: …she's still a little moody…

**Gamble7**

You're in the fic, baby! It's time to celebrate, crack open a root beer, and watch some Harvey Birdman with me and Dalton.

DALTON: Man, our parties are _lame…_

**Lil**** Irish QT**

Due to the exactness of your hotness ratings, I can only guess that they were derived from some incredibly complex scientific equation. I only wish I had the same textbook.

**MusiCath**

Well, I can see preppie love, but an _eleven _for hotnessjust seems excessive.

DALTON: ((dances by in a toga)) I AM THE MONARCH OF THE SEA!

**Ershey**

Oh, man, Ersh, I've got it all figured out: you and Mush are going to be like Romeo and Juliet, except with SOCCER. And no one dies. Probably. ((cough))

**allaboutelephants22**

Thank you, my darling! Dalton keeps the spikes, and stripes; _I _keep the punk rock hotties.

**FrenchyGoil**

Allow me to share with you all of the French that I, the girl-genius of the universe, happen to know:

« J'ai faim. »

Honestly, that's all you need to know in any country. Also, "no, I would prefer not to have a good time with you and your brother."

**Lutabelle**

I HAVE RUN OUT OF A.S.S.-RELATED PUNS.

**Ccatt**

DALTON: They say that Shaft is one BAD mother—

Um, yes. Charlie and I are complete losers. But he IS a complete loser who got a 7 in masculinity, so how about that?

**Silky Conlon**

I must say, after receiving your casting call, it was quite a relief to realize that you were a Silky Conlon, not a Silky Colon (that was the name on the review I got from you). Although I have to admit, that mistake was kind of inspiring. I had visions of Spot serenading you by moonlight, singing about the beauty of your internal organs…

DALTON: You have officially lost any chance you ever had of this person mistaking you for sane.

**Singin****'-Newsies-Goil**

((raises an eyebrow)) Dutchy…must die.

DALTON: AND I, WITH MY ALL-AMERICAN HETEROSEXUAL HOTNESS, WILL KILL HIM!

**Written ****Sparks**

Sparks-a-go-go! Hide not your stories, for they must be seven times better than mine, perhaps even eight or eight and a half. And for heaven's sake, don't live on the prairie unless you happen to live on a little house and your name is Laura Ingalls, in which case that would actually be really neat. But if not, go west, young woman, and grow up with your country.

**B**

Yes—poor little Davey being forced into a group of boys who already know each other really really well and think he's kind of a loser. I love doing that. It's such a great plot device, because it lets you get to know the characters as your protagonist does, and also saves you from such awful expository writing as "Well, Jack, my seventeen-year old friend, what do you say we go down to the Tastee Freez to get some vanilla softserve, since you are allergic to chocolate as well as peanuts and shellfish?"

P.S.—you owe me a casting call, and I happen to have a mafia!Race hanging around. You wrote him. So tell me whether or not you still want in, or I'll be sending Big Tony over with some pliers and a blowtorch and, I'm just sayin', you might have mobility issues.

DALTON: You are such. A LOSER.

I know.

**Erin Go Bragh**

DALTON: Don't worry, that's how Dakki feels every single day.

((after a good five minutes)) …HEY!

**NadaZimri**

I don't think that rumor about shout-outs being outlawed is true. And I am disproving it right now by WRITING A SHOUT OUT!

DALTON: …what a rebel.

YES I AM. In fact, I am going to announce it to the whole fic.

-

**Author's Note Part the Second—**

DALTON: ((sighs)) Dakki would like to announce…that she is a rebel, and she is a rider at the gates of dawn who takes no prisoners. That is all. Now go review and tell her to shut up.

Love,

Dalton and Dakki


	3. Iodine

The Boys of McKinley House  
Chapter Three—Iodine

-

The night was getting colder, and Jack was having a little trouble getting into the school.

The locks appeared to be frozen, but that couldn't be right. It was September. Things didn't get so cold out here this early; temperatures were arctic back home, but that was to be expected. Even in the middle of summer, the door to West 81st street sometimes froze solid overnight. Here, though, things had never been that bad.

Jack was, he admitted to himself now, a little inebriated. Maybe more than a little, to be perfectly honest. It was one o'clock in the morning on the first day of classes and Jack was slumped against the door to McKinley house. He had his rooming assignment, he had his key, he had his suitcase. He just couldn't get inside. And he could have sworn that, just a minute ago, it had started snowing.

He was on his knees, pounding at the door and howling at the gates, when she showed up like a vision. She was just as he remembered: calm, composed, and flawlessly, icily, immaculately pretty. It was past midnight and she was just returning to the school, had probably had just as much to drink as he had, but she wasn't even flushed. Her face never betrayed a thing.

"Jack Kelly," she said, by way of greeting. In the years he had known her she had never called him by anything but his whole name, as if she was reading it from the gossip pages of the _Post_.

"Now what's a badly behaved boy like you doing in a place like this?" she asked. "Haven't they kicked you out yet?"

"Hello, Benny," he sighed.

She smiled at him in that smooth, metallic way of hers. Her hair was white gold, tied back with a green velvet ribbon.

"I can't get in," he explained lamely. "The door won't open, so I can't get in." He paused, thinking a moment. "Hey, how the hell are you planning on getting into your room, anyway? It's not like you have a key to the fucking house door, or something."

"Actually, it's exactly like I have a key to the fucking house door."

"Oh."

"Ms. Larsen gave me one. Since I spend so many late nights studying in the library."

"Jesus, Benny, when was the last time you were in the library?"

"Exactly." She leaned against the side of McKinley house, playing with the open parts of the trellis that ran up the wall, and glanced down at Jack. Jack turned his attention again to trying to open the door, mainly so he wouldn't have to look at her.

"You know," she said, as if it had just occurred to her, "you can always stay with me tonight. My roommate Colleen's parents aren't leaving town until tomorrow and she's staying in Portland with them tonight—you'll have a bed, if you need it. Or at least we'll have some privacy."

Jack looked up at her for a long moment. When he was first introduced to her, he had thought she was the most spoiled, self-absorbed, cruel, contemptible, manipulative, loathsome girl he had ever met. Two years as her acquaintance had only served to strengthen that conviction. The last thing he wanted to do, on this miserable first evening back, was spend the night with someone like Benny Kittridge.

But at the same time, he was struck, suddenly, with a memory of a long ago April morning: he and Benny in bed, her arms around his shoulders, her head against his neck. It was a Sunday, and they were both skipping Easter chapel to stay in his room, the sun pouring in through the window, the sound of the church bells as they rang echoing across the misty school grounds.

At that moment, sitting on the front steps, drunk and miserable, he hated Benny Kittridge more than he could even describe. But on such a bitter, freezing night, how could he afford to reject whatever chill comfort she might give him?

She reached out a hand to help him up; he took it, and found that her fingers were frozen as well as the locks on the doors. He kissed her on her forehead, her cheeks, her temple, her neck, until finally, impatient, she pulled him down and kissed him, hard, on the mouth. After a moment, he pulled away, bewildered, wondering if he should ask her if he felt to her as cold as she did to him, and whether it would be impolite to ask this girl if she really was made of ice. He settled for the next best thing.

"You are beautiful," he said.

She smiled, silent, wound her fingers through his own, and began to lead him down the path to the secret world in which she lived. As they stumbled through the darkness, she whispered something he couldn't hear over the hiss of the stars.

"What did you say?" he asked.

She laughed, her voice cool and soft. "I said, 'You've got a minute left to fall in love.'"

Jack closed his eyes, and let her lead him through the dark.

-

Daniel Slocombe, Jack's roommate on the third floor of McKinley house, had tousled hair, a wide, white smile, and the kind of elegant, languid charm that was reserved exclusively for Southern boys. He came from a prominent Savannah family--his mother, Dutton Sutherland Slocombe, had been Miss Soybean Festival in 1959 and Miss Liberty in 1960, and his father, Alexander Slocombe, was a UGA football star turned defense lawyer who was now one of the most sought-after litigators in all of Georgia. Daniel himself was a third-generation Caldwell boy who, in addition to taking a full course load, played defense on the school lacrosse team, volunteered at the local crisis hotline center, was editor of the _Bysting_, Caldwell's literary magazine, and played the piano beautifully with the school jazz band. He was applying early to Duke that fall, and everyone who knew him was certain he would get in.

Daniel was the perfect student, the perfect son, and the perfect gentleman, and he handled everything he went through with such an easy grace that, when he finally began to crack up, later than year, no one would realize it until it was almost too late. His teachers called him Mr. Slocombe, his parents called him Danny, and his brother called him Babe. But among the boys of McKinley house, he was known, always, as Skittery.

He could handle anything from looming deadlines to final exams, but there was one person around whom his resolve collapsed, and his spine turned to pineapple Jell-O. Bryce Dawson, his girlfriend for the last two years, was tall, slender, and delicate, with fine dark hair, green eyes, and one of most difficult dispositions in the state of Georgia. Behind her back, Skittery's friends called her the Vamp of Savannah. At her best, she was warm, kind, clever, and unstintingly devoted to those she loved; at her worst, she was short-tempered, jealous, and almost impossible to please.

Being in love with Bryce, Skittery liked to say, was like living in a country that was going through a period of political turmoil; Nicaragua was one of the most beautiful places in the world, but to stay in the middle all that beauty, you had to live with all the violence and danger as well, and say goodbye to a life of safety. Skittery loved the beauty enough to stay. Some of the most concussively perfect moments in life, he said, could be found sitting on one of the white-sand beaches of the Nicaraguan coast, drinking a mai tai, and enjoying the sound of the waves crashing down on the shore in the momentary silences between blasts of machine gun fire.

Jack could tell, though, the moment he walked into their room that morning, that is was not a good day for Central American politics. Skittery was sitting on the edge of his bed, a cigarette one hand, the telephone in the other, whispering uneasily into the receiver. From this evidence alone, Jack knew there was only person his roommate could be talking to: for one thing, there was only one person in the world who could make him this on-edge. For another thing, Skittery had the luxury of turning his Southern accent on and off, his voice generic Midwestern inflection when he was at school, but whenever he talked to someone back home, it came straight back. Right now, he sounded like Ashley Wilkes.

"Yes, honey, I _know _this is your entrance into womanhood…yes…I know the timing can't be changed. That's the thing. The date for my final exams can't be changed either. And if I don't take them because I'm down at the Judge's house drinking champagne and wearing out my dancing shoes with you, then I can't graduate…do you see my point?" He paused, sighing, and leaned back.

Stepping forward, Jack rapped lightly on the doorjamb. Skittery looked up, and smiled tiredly. "The Vamp of Savannah," he whispered, holding the receiver away from his mouth. Jack dropped his suitcase by the door, and collapsed on his narrow bed, kicking off his shoes as he listened in on his roommate's conversation.

"No, honey, I didn't say a word…yes…I know a girl's coming out party is the most important time in her life. Uh huh. Uh huh. I'm sure any other boy in Savannah society _would _be happy to dance with you on your first night as a woman…I—…oh, honey, don't say that."

It was early morning, just a little after five o' clock, and still dark as night. Jack had woken up early in Benny's bed and slipped out while she was still asleep, making his way back to McKinley house, sure that he could sneak in while his roommate was still asleep. If Skittery had been talking to anyone else this early in the morning, Jack would have been surprised; but since it was Bryce, it somehow seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

It was eight o' clock in the morning in Savannah, and Jack could just picture Bryce sitting in her ruffled pink bedroom, half in and out of the uniform she wore to the Mercer School, holding the receiver against her bare shoulder and trying to cut Skittery's heart out across national long-distance phone line 22017. She was probably telling him now about the blue velvet dress she was going to wear, the same one her grandmother had worn to her own coming out party when she was a debutante in Charlottesville in 1928; about how her father had used his last favor with Big Tony Wojciechowsky to hire the best caterers in the state of Georgia, who would be serving, for example, two hundred puff pastry triangles stuffed with curried walnut chicken, and a Lady Baltimore cake with boiled icing and candied violets, seven layers high, with lemon and raspberry filling; about how she had been taking dance classes in the box step and fox trot and waltz ever since she was a little girl in preparation for this very event; and about how, most importantly, if he didn't show up, she would be snatched up in a space of five minutes by more deserving boy, and Skittery would never see her again.

Dropping the receiver into its cradle, Skittery groaned and collapsed on his bed. After a few moments he raised his head, and looked at Jack with one eye.

"Do you think I could get a good rate down to Savannah if I was flying during the Christmas season?" he asked, his speech already coming out in clipped Yankee consonants. "Bryce's party is on the ninth of December."

"You can probably find a decent price if you book soon," Jack said. "TWA isn't usually too expensive."

"Thank you," Skittery sighed. "So how was Benny?"

Jack stared at him, startled. "How did you know?"

"Jack," Skittery said wearily, heaving himself off the bed, "you look like you've just come back from watching an execution. I've only ever met two girls who can do that to a man. One of them is Bryce, who, despite what she claims, would never make anyone but me miserable, and who I have just talked to on the phone and know for a fact is in a different time zone and therefore could not have spent the night with you.The other one is Benny Kittridge."

"Oh," said Jack.

"Also," Skittery said over his shoulder, turning from the mirror where he was knotting his tie, "you have her lipstick all over your collar. Apricot Dream, I believe. She wore the same kind when she pounced me last January, and she doesn't strike me as the kind of girl who would change the color of her lipstick without a good reason."

"That lipstick tube has probably lasted longer than any relationship she's ever had," Jack muttered.

"Or any relationship you've had, for that matter," Skittery said, coming to sit next to Jack on his bed. "I often wonder why you don't get together. You have so much in common."

"You know, Skitts, despite my entire—what's the word?—personality, I like to think that I at least have some kind of heart, no matter how ruined it might be by now."

"You're a swell guy," said Skittery. "Honest."

"Thanks," he said. "So, did your Nicaraguan sweetheart wake up everyone else on the third floor? I'd like to maybe talk to someone who doesn't have me completely figured out."

"They're all at the Ironside," said Skittery, slipping into his blazer.

"God, this early?"

"Don't we usually go down this early? It opens at five, classes start a little before eight…there's a certain window you have to shoot for if you want one of those twelve-egg omelets."

The Ironside Café was a restaurant on the outskirts of St. Helens, situated on highway thirty between Pacific Pride commercial fueling and Portland Windustrial. It had absolutely no redeeming features, but on any morning, just after daylight, a Caldwell boy could probably be found there, sitting at the counter eating a slice of rhubarb pie and trying to get a date from Audrey Kaplan, the good waitress, or buried in a booth by the window, a plate of scrambled eggs at his elbow, working on a long-overdue paper for Kloppman's history class while Rexanne Krakowski, the bad waitress, leaned over his shoulder and whispered to him about the battle of Bull Run and the burning of Atlanta while she refilled his coffee. (Rexanne was a bad waitress mainly because she always seemed to know more about what Caldwell students were learning than the Caldwell students themselves.) Racetrack, who lived with his family in a house on Pittsburg road, went there almost every morning before school, and had done the unspeakable in striking up a friendship with Rexanne, the bad waitress, and her townie boyfriend, Spot. Jack would bet anything that it had been Racetrack's idea to go there this morning.

"I can't remember the last time anybody went on the first day of classes," Jack said. "Nobody usually gets that desperate to leave the school until at least two weeks in."

"Well, there's a new junior Race wants to show around. Marshall Taylor scholarship, from New York I think."

"God, another scholarship." Jack lay back onto his bed. "Did you meet him?"

"Yesterday. I didn't really talk to him at all."

"And?"

"I could tell you things about his socks."

"Another scholarship," Jack concluded.

"Another scholarship. Anyway, a Race came up right after Bryce called, and a bunch of them went to the Ironside for breakfast—Blink, Mush, Specs, Snitch, and the new kid, uh…Davey. That was it." He paused. "I'm going down there. You want to come with?"

Jack looked up at Skittery from his bed. "The thing I want most right now," he said, "is to sleep for just a couple more hours. I'm hoping that, by the time I wake up, I can feel capable of spending another year in this place."

"I'll bring you back some toast," Skittery said.

-

It's hard to look sexy in mustard yellow, but she did.

Standing behind the counter at the Ironside café was the most beautiful girl Racetrack had ever seen in a waitress's uniform. Her reddish-gold hair was knotted at the nape of her neck, and she was laughing at something as she reached into a glass case to pull out a donut for a customer.

"Rexanne," said Racetrack, "you see the donut that waitress over there is holding?"

"Yeah?"

"It's my heart."

"It's a cruller, Race."

Racetrack sighed and handed her his menu. "I'll have the blue plate special."

"Of course." She turned to David. "And you?"

"Oh—I'll just have some coffee."

"He'll have the blue plate special."

"Really, just coffee would be fine—"

"What kind of toast you want with that special?" Rexanne asked, looking up from her notepad.

"Oh…wheat, I guess…"

As the rest of them—Blink, Mush, Snitch, and Specs—ordered, and began to talk amongst themselves, Racetrack turned his attention back to the most beautiful waitress in the world. She had to be new to the job; for as long as Race could remember, Rexanne and Audrey had be the only waitresses grateful or hard up enough to work here. And she must be a townie, Race thought. She looked young; she probably went to St. Helens High School with Rexanne.

And her socks—her socks were lovely, like nothing he had ever seen before. And Racetrack knew from socks. They were short, perfectly white socks that came up to her ankles (she had beautiful ankles). They were neither too short nor too long, dirty, threadbare, or worn through; they were a thing of beauty. The nametag on her uniform said RACHEL. She looked up at him, the newly risen sun shining through the window behind her making her look like she had a halo, and smiled at him as if she'd just seen the person she had been looking for her whole life.

Like everything about her, her teeth were so lovely, they almost made his heart hurt. She must have brushed and flossed after every meal. And he was just about to go over and try to talk to her—he was never good at talking to girls like this, but this was the love of his life, he would think of something—maybe he would ask her what kind of toothpaste she used, just say something—but then Sylvy Golino, the religion professor's daughter, appeared by the table, and he couldn't even think, let alone move.

"Racetrack," she said, quietly, "I have to tell you about something." She paused. "Later. Can you meet me at Spot's house today, at noon?"

Racetrack could only nod, petrified. A moment later she was out the door in a flurry of red hair and heedless beauty, and Rachel, startled by the sound of the bells as they rang at Sylvy's departure, dropped an entire tray of crullers onto the floor.

-

**Author's Note: **The title of this chapter came from a heartbreakingly wonderful Leonard Cohen song whose lyrics I cannot print here for obvious reasons, but which you should look for anyway, because Leonard Cohen is just about the best thing to come out of Canada since instant mashed potatoes.

The establishments mentioned in this chapter--Portland Windustrial, Pacific Pride commercial fueling, and St. Helens High School--are real, as is the town of St. Helens. The Ironside Cafe is fictitious, but is based on several real cafes in the Pacific Northwest, all of which serve blue plate specials and softserve ice cream and have signs out front that say "TRY OUR CHINESE FOOD AND GREAT HQMEMADE SOUP." I had my eighth birthday party in one of them and thehqmemade soup_was _great. I suppose you've all figured out by now how much I dearly love the place I live in.

Also, you may have figured out from the beginning of this chapter that this isn't a happy, we're-all-friends, secure in our sexualities and senses of self, rock n' roll high school. People are manipulative and cruel and use sex to get what they want, and the girls, especially Benny, are not as beautiful as they are kind. This is just a warning, really, that from here on out, the loyal, pelvic thrusting newsboys we know and love have more or less disappeared, and we'r entering a darker world.

But there will be great hqmemade soup.

-

**Shout Outs!  
**Man, I love you guys.

**The Noble Platypus, Monarch of the Sea  
**You know, I was at Costco the other day, and there was a whole SECTION for _Land Before Time _movies. I saw sequels going as high as XI, but there must be even more than that. It really is quite terrifying. Be happy you like Littlefoot, because he may be this country's next president.

**Rubix  
**Why does David have to be gay? ((ponders)) Well, my dear, I'll give that to you in seven words…

"JACK! WHY DON'T YOU STAY HERE TONIGHT!"

I rest my case.

**Lutabelle  
**Would you expect anything less than totally shameless smutting from me, the vegan cheese substitute princess of gay porn? I think not, my love.

**Ccatt  
**Aw, don't thank me for the "I ate babies" line. Thank my irrepressible urge to make David Jacobs's life utterly miserable. I feel like a chapter just isn't worth it if I haven't humiliated him in SOME way.

**Oxymoronic Alliteration  
**Making Davey's life miserable is one of the things I love best to do…and if we work together, we can probably drive him utterly insane in a maximum of six chapters. (It goes without saying that one of the best things about this stupid website is the fact that you can meet people just as nuts as you are.)

**Unknown-Dream  
**A kwee! I made someone _kwee_! I've never done that before! ((dances with herself)) And I am taking up your offer and having an oatmeal cookie—'cause they're cookies, but they're oatmeal, so you know they're good for you. (The really sad part is, I didn't even make that up by myself.)

**Saturday  
**I LOVE YOU, MAN! ((goes crazy and starts dancing around.)) WHY do I love your reviews so much? Why? Why? Why? What is it about them that makes me want to immediately get back on the computer even though I updated about twenty minutes ago and write 239067843906740937694037694 more pages of beautiful fic? I don't know. But they do. And really, all I can say is, I love you man. ((tackles you))

DALTON, KNOX, SPOT, RACE, DAVEY, BUMLETS, SWIFTY, and COWBOY JACK: ((tackle you as well))

YAY MAN-TACKLING!

DALTON: I'M NOT GAY!

**Lady of Tir Na Nog  
**DALTON: I could beat up Davey. Would that prove my masculinity?

((nods))

DALTON: ((lunges))

DAVEY: NOT THE FACE!

**FrenchyGoil  
**«Non, merci, j'aimerais mieux ne pas passer un bon moment avec toi et ton frère.» …Charlie, you may wanna learn that one.

DALTON: I hate you.

I know.

…and there's only one REALLY evil popular girl, who turned up at the beginning of the chapter and seduced our poor sweet Jacky-Boy. Although part of me thinks you don't have to TRY too hard to seduce Jack…((smiles evilly))

**Musicath  
**I LOVED GRENDEL! ((high-fives)) We had to read _Beowulf _in tenth grade, and also watch _The Thirteenth Warrior. _And I almost died.

DALTON: She lost all vital signs and everything.

It was great. But now, whenever I start to lose perspective, I read _Highlights_. It's Fun with a Purpose!

**Silky Conlon  
**I kind of want to call you Silky Colon now—I just think of you that way—but that would be mean. So I'll just think of Spot as "The Colon" from now on, and that will enrich my life beyond belief.

**NadaZimri  
**I AM SO A REBEL! Right, Charlie?

DALTON: Um…

Right? RIGHT?

DALTON: I have to go…reorganize the freezer now…((runs off))

What strange behavior…

**Ershey  
**You know, for once in my fanficcing life, I'm not planning on killing anyone. But now that you've put the idea in my head…((smiles evilly))

**Sodapop  
**DALTON: Oh yes, Jack Kelly…a VERY big man on campus…((raises an eyebrow))

…and he claims not to be gay.

**Sapphy  
**DALTON: Kennedy…my love…I shall compose an entire SYMPHONY praising your beauty!

You know, if it weren't for Kenny, I would completely lose ANY hope of him not being gay. Do straight guys ever compose symphonies? Don't they just watch Lakers games and make you wash their shorts? …if Dalton is straight, we've found the greatest heterosexual male in the world, even if he IS fictitious.

**Erin Go Bragh  
**Well, there are an awful lot of queers and queens in this story. I think I end up with about three classic pairings (you can guess which ones)—Lute was actually surprised that I wasn't going to do all of them, but it feels sort of unlikely that, out of a group of ten guys randomly thrown together, all of them would turn out to be gay. That happens only in our dreams.

-

Review, my Spanish galleons! Or Charlie will do the Time Warp, again.


	4. The Dark Side of the Gym

The Boys of McKinley House  
Chapter Four—The Dark Side of the Gym

-

Racetrack lost his virginity comparatively late for someone who went to the same school as Benny Kittridge. Nationally, the average age for a human male's first experience of sexual intercourse was 16.9; in its seventy-year history, Caldwell had always more or less matched the national trend. The year Benny Kittridge arrived as a freshman, the number dropped from 16.9 to 16.3. It had been steadily decreasing with each semester she attended.

For Benny, maturity had never been a struggle. She always been exquisitely beautiful, without a single awkward phase that anyone could remember; ever since childhood, she had carried herself like an adult. One brilliant Sunday, a week after her thirteenth birthday, she woke up to find herself curled up in pain, chewing holes through the sheets. Her mother gave her a Valium and taught her how to wash "down there," and erase all offensive odors; her father went out for a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and Benny, sitting in her bed that night and smelling of nothing more than Lilac Mist, thought to herself, _I am a woman now_, and smiled into the darkness with all her twenty-six perfect teeth.

And that, in Benny's opinion, was that. Three months later, she lost her virginity to an eighteen-year-old sailing instructor at Camp Tamakwa, and after that, no one was safe. Benny collected boys the way some people collected comic books, and she wouldn't stop until she had every last one of them: every Green Lantern, Swamp Thing, Supergirl, Starman, and Thor.

Every person is, as much as anything else, a catalogue of stories, some famous, some hidden, some luminous fabrications. Of all these (getting drunk on peach schnapps the night of your eighth grade graduation; solving the mystery of what the religion professor's daughter conceals beneath her green dress; all memories involving tragic, beautiful first heartbreaks—even though the heart is, on the whole, stronger than a diesel engine), the perennial bestseller in the catalogue of human experience is the story of The First Time.

Maybe it is its infinite variation that fascinates us so. There is a rainbow spectrum of humiliation, mythical beauty, pain, bliss, and nostalgia; no two experiences have ever been exactly alike, and they never will be. And so while Benny Kittridge would always remember the feel of a wool blanket against her bare skin as she lay on a narrow bunk mattress, her hair static from the rain outside, Debby Boone on the radio and the smell of Coppertone 45 on Lance the sailing instructor's broad, tan shoulders (-how even though it had hurt so badly, she hadn't cried, not even a little), Jack, who lost his virginity in the art department darkroom when he was fifteen to a girl who thought he was his older brother Jamie, would always remember pitch black, being suddenly shoved up against the wall, someone's manicured hands under his shirt, pressed against the flat of his back, the sound of bottles breaking and the smell of hyposulphite of soda, and then, before he had even realized what happened, being alone again, knees shaking, belt undone.

John F. Kennedy, Jack's namesake, lost his virginity at seventeen in a Harlem bordello; David Berkowitz at nineteen with a Korean prostitute, while he was serving in the U.S. Army. Great minds seemed to take longer to mature: D.H. Lawrence was deflowered at twenty-five by a London prostitute, Mary Wollstonecraft at thirty-three in a Paris hotel room, and George Bernard Shaw at twenty-nine, with a widow fifteen years his senior, while Lasse Braun, the porn king of all of Europe, managed to stay pure until his eighth birthday, when he was found in the attic with a nine-year-old Italian girl. In comparison to this, John Holmes, owner of the most beloved penis in America, was a late-bloomer, losing his virginity at twelve with a friend of his mother's.

Holmes went on to star in over two thousand pornographic films, and would later estimate to have slept with roughly 14,000 women, although conservative guesses place that number in the low thousands. And that was the part that really bothered Race: at the very least, John Holmes had gotten laid two thousand times, and at the age of seventeen, going to school with the most sexually aggressive girl in Columbia County, Racetrack hadn't even managed it _once._

It is impossible for you to know, unless you have experienced it, what it's like when all of your friends have slept with a girl and you haven't. It seemed like almost every morning Race sat through conversations about the strawberry-shaped birthmark on Benny's inner thigh; the perfume she anointed herself with every morning, behind her ears and between her breasts, and where the manufactured scent ended and her own intoxicating musk began; the way she melted into your arms if you ran a hand through her white-gold hair. Racetrack agonized over his virginity, cursed and lamented, and wondered why, when everyone else at school seemed to be going at it like a mink in full rut, he stayed pure. He contemplated, briefly, joining the priesthood, even if it meant he would be doomed to a lifetime of celibacy: he thought, bitterly, that celibacy was his ultimate fate, and at least this way he would have the dignity of being able to say it had been by choice. For years, he was in constant torment.

And then, one night in August, a month before the start of his senior year, he surrendered his innocence to the one girl at Caldwell who had always had a decent chance of someday becoming a nun.

Race had known Sylvy Golino for years, since she moved to St. Helens with her father, and her older brother Charlie. Sylvy had been eleven, Racetrack had been twelve. They had a lot in common: they were both faculty brats, both from back East, both had one Italian parent, and both had been raised Roman Catholic. They had been friends since meeting, and could easily have ended up in a convent together, with Racetrack as priest, and Sylvy as a sister. Instead, they lost their virginities together.

Here is what happened: Sylvy Golino wore a green dress.

Not just any green dress. A dress that clung to every curve, quivered with her every breath; a dress that showed _everything_. For years she had been hiding herself behind baggy clothes, developing her body in secret, like a gardener who grew flowers by candlelight. For years, he hadn't really seen her as a girl, as anything—and now here she was at a faculty dinner party in his family's house, on the hottest night of August, looking at him like she wanted to eat him alive. She seemed to have turned achingly, smolderingly voluptuous overnight; her every movement had a slow, heavy smolder. They were seated at opposite sides of the table, and for two hours, through shrimp, mushrooms, pasta, salad, and wine, they didn't take their eyes off each other.

At one point Racetrack though to himself, with some dismay, that he would have to come up with a new pet name for Sylvy, now that "Toothpick" seemed to be out.

After dinner finally ended, and all the adults were getting drunk and arguing about the situation in Central America, Racetrack headed upstairs, thinking he could calm down if only he could read some calculus. The full moon shone bright outside, and Sylvy was waiting for him in his room, standing by the window, looking out.

"Toothpick," he said.

And then, of course, they were down on the bed, and she only ever did get to wear the green dress that one time. And for how fast it was, how she kissed him so ravenously and didn't let up for a minute, she was so warm, and sweet, and giving, and when she winced from the pain of it for just a moment, he felt the strangest need to protect her from something, although he wasn't sure what. And so it happened by the grace of God that Racetrack Higgins lost his virginity to Sylvy Golino, the religion professor's daughter, who had always had a thing about full moons.

They didn't speak for the rest of the summer; that morning in the Ironside Café was the first time he had seen her in a month. He was thinking about that night in August as he drove over to Spot's house to meet here, and wondering what it was Sylvy could possibly be so upset about. The only answer he could come up with was that she had finally decided to become a nun.

Racetrack had lived in St. Helens since he was six, and had been friends with Spot Conlon for just as long. With the possible exceptions of Jack and Isobel, Spot knew him better than anyone else did. He had almost been kicked out of St. Helens High too many times to count, and had been going with Rexanne since that summer. You could tell him anything without fear of being judged, and although Race didn't see much of him during the school year, and they had been growing apart since he started at Caldwell, Racetrack was still at Spot's house almost as often as he was at home.

Spot lived with his Aunt Bev and Uncle Carl in a little house near the Boise Veneer lumber mill. Ninety-eight percent of the time, though, it was empty, at least of the people who called it home. Knowledge of it had spread through Caldwell, and now, it was a safe haven for dozens of teenagers. Girls who ran away from school could stay there for a while; meetings too secret to be held on the school grounds took place there; Spot's bed had been christened by amorous couples too many times to count. Every year, the Caldwell graduation party was held there, but more than anything else, it was a place to go where you didn't want anyone to find you, and so Racetrack knew, even before he met up with Sylvy that afternoon, that whatever she had to tell him was bad.

She was waiting for him out front, sitting on the porch swing amidst a jungle of dead spider plants and African violets. She knew he was there as soon as his car pulled into the drive, but she pretended not to see him until he was three feet away from her, looking for the key Spot's Aunt Bev kept under the doormat.

"I've never skipped class before," she said.

He turned the key in the look, not really listening, and swung the door open. "Yeah? What are you missing?"

"French."

"I failed that class."

"I know," she said, almost smiling. She followed him inside, hands buried deep in the pockets of her coat, and leaned against the refrigerator while he looked through the kitchen cabinets for something to drink.

"Well, this'll be a new year for you, Sylv. I'm sure you'll do lots of things you've never done before. You're…y'know…_maturing._"

"No kidding," she murmured into her collar.

He cringed at his choice of words as he pulled out a bottle of gin, and poured a little into two chipped mugs. "Here," he said, pushing one towards her.

"Can't," she said, putting a hand protectively over her stomach, and in about an eighth of a second he went from being puzzled to being horrified.

"Oh, Jesus," he said, putting his head in his hands. "Oh, Sylv." He looked up at her. "How long have you known?"

"Since last week. I think I'm about a month along."

"This is not good news."

"No," she said.

"This is bad news."

"Yes, it is."

He looked at her a moment, and wrestled with asking her a question he was sure he already knew the answer to. She was a Catholic girl. But still there was some chance, wasn't there?

"Have you thought of…um…getting it taken care of? I could drive you into Portland this weekend, even, if you wanted to."

"I thought about that for a minute," she said, leaning her head against the cabinet. "But really, I couldn't do it. Don't ask me to do it, Race."

"I won't," he said. "God, what would your father think?"

"I don't think he'll notice," she said, and her smile was less sad than knowing. Standing there in Spot's kitchen, the light that came from her making the yellowed linoleum shine, she looked for a moment like Our Lady of Squalor and Teen Pregnancy. Without thinking, he leaned forward, and kissed her on the forehead. "Oh, Toothpick."

"I'm just asking you now," she said, "whether you want to be a part of this. I mean—if you don't want to be—I won't tell anybody. I know a lot could change if you took responsibility. No one has to know."

"Sylv," he said, "with my friends, all this'll do is make me the stud god of Caldwell, and you know how long I've been waiting to beat Jack at that game. With the people in charge of the school—who the fuck—"

"Don't curse like that."

"All right. So as for the people in charge, who cares what they think? We haven't done anything wrong. And you know, we can do this together. We'll be…we'll be wonderful."

She nodded, smiled, pushed back her auburn hair, looked at the gin in the mug one more time, pushed it away from her. "But…Race…one last thing. Even if we're gonna—well, you know, we don't have to—um—"

"No, Toothpick, we don't have to get married. You know I like you too much to ruin your life like that."

"Oh, thank Christ."

"Don't curse like that," Race said with a smile. "You're somebody's mother now."

-

**Author's Note: **Und zuss, ze plot thick—

DALTON: ((slaps her upside the head))

OW. …And thus, the plot thickens, much like the firming of Jell-O, whether it be cherry, raspberry, strawberry, strawberry-kiwi, lemon, lime, lemon-lime, mango-peach, or pineapple.

DALTON: Or orange!

…Yes. Or orange. So, to recap…((looks at a spreadsheet, sighs, and crumples it up)) …EVERYONE is having sex with EVERYONE else. And Racetrack is Too Young to be a Dad.

DALTON: I find it highly disturbing that RACETRACK has impregnated someone when I, Charlie, have not.

Could it be because you, Charlie, are gay?

DALTON: SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP.

-

**Shoutouts!**

You guys can review like Boogaloo Shrimp can dance.

DALTON: …is that even a compliment? Are you sure you're not insulting them? Maybe you should compare them to Shabba-Doo.

((long pause)) …Charlie, listen to what we're _saying. _I think we have to put a stop to this ritual of watching _Breakin' _every Saturday night in my room.

DALTON: You're right. You go destroy the tape; I'll take care of the shout-outs.

**Lady of Tir Na Nog  
**DALTON: Tir Na Nog? …like the land in the story the mom was telling to her kids in _Titanic_? …God, I always cry during that part…((coughs)) …Anyway, some guys may be cruel and manipulative, but I am not. I am fantastic. And you can come watch _Titanic _with me and Dakki any day of the week.

**Lil Irish QT  
**DALTON: If I had my way, we would update MUCH more often than we actually do. But Dakki is really uncool. Anyway, I'm glad you like the fic—I'm responsible for pretty much all the good parts. You know the parts you don't like? They were Dakki's idea.

**Cakes  
**DALTON: Look, next time you leave a review, try saying "great job CHARLIE." I mean, Dakki does the actual typing, but I return her library books and sign her report cards and make her macaroni and cheese and watch Lifetime with her. MOST OF WHAT YOU READ UP THERE IS MY SWEAT AND BLOOD. It just _looks _like gay smut. Okay? Good.

**The Noble Platypus  
**DALTON: Well, personally, I object to ALL the _Land Before Time _movies. They might be fun for cruel, heartless people like YOU to watch, but think about how hard it is for the baby dinosaurs! They work long hours, suffer abusive treatment from the directors, and most of the money they make is taken by their parents anyway. Next time you watch your precious Littlefoot, think of the exploited brontosaurus who plays him.

**Rubix the Cube  
**DALTON: Man, Rubix, babe, I agree. Not all guys who have good grammar are gay—authors (like DAKKI) just paint us that way for their own amusement. And it is so sickening. David Jacobs is ALMOST as straight and masculine as I am.

**Unknown-Dreams  
**DALTON: When we passed the restaurant with the "hqmemade soup" sign, I wanted Dakki to pull the car over so I could fix the letters, but she told me I was just being silly. However, I think she was wrong. Because, you know, if you let people get away with incorrect spelling, pretty soon they start going to the bathroom without washing their hands, drinking milk past its expiration date…and then all of a sudden, PANDEMONIUM, people going around raping, burning, pillaging…AND ALL BECAUSE SOMEONE USED A "Q" INSTEAD OF AN "O." We have to stop this problem at its root. We have to fix that spelling.

**Silky Conlon  
**DALTON: Then I shall call you…Butch! HI BUTCH! I'm so glad you like the fic! …most people named Butch do…although, isn't that kind of a strange name for a girl? Is it short for something? Butchina? Butchanne? Butcherella? …Are your parents Eskimos?

**Sapphy  
**DALTON: Sapphy, I have only one thing to say to you: nobody puts Kenny in the corner.

**madmbutterfly713  
**DALTON: I don't know why Dakki even wrote that, since I'm the only one who can pull off mustard yellow, as well as puce, chartreuse, drano blue, and pepto bismol pink. …I was just born for the runway, you know? Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

**Ccatt  
**DALTON: Honey, if you want to do the Time Warp with me, I would be delighted. Just put on your dancing shoes and see if you can keep up.

**Written Sparks  
**Really, everything you liked about the last chapter was completely my idea. And as for Bryce making Skitts miserable…well, that's a way of showing someone how much you love them, you silly goose! Look no farther than my relationship with Dakki, and you'll see that it's true.

**MusiCath  
**DALTON: Since most of this fic is my idea, I should answer your questions: Blanche Dubois is the heroine of Tennessee Williams' _A Streetcar Named Desire_. In the play, the eventually went crazy, just like Skittery, although Blanche had a better wardrobe. As for the nervous breakdown thing: Skittery is altogether a calm and collected person, but he does have a history of crack-ups, which is where his name comes from, otherwise it would be fairly inexplicable. …Trust me. There are NO plot holes when Charlie Dalton is in charge. ((strikes a dramatic pose))

**Ershey  
**DALTON: Now, I know you would miss the newsies dearly…but would you mind if I killed _Dakki_?

**Saturday  
**DALTON: Sweetie, you've got to stop encouraging her so much. Every time she gets one of your reviews she squeaks and jumps up and down and runs around the house, and then, because we have hardwood floors and she NEVER wears those socks with the skids I bought for her, she crashes into something, and falls over, and sprains her wrist, and we have to go to the emergency room and have it taken care of and then I have to buy her a Goodbar and kiss it better and then by the time we get home "America's Next Top Model" is OVER. And Saturday, the only joy in my life comes from watching that show. And you are TAKING THAT AWAY FROM ME. So honestly, I don't know how you can sleep at night.

**FlatOutCrazy  
**DALTON: If Dakki heard that, she'd go berserk. She's an Oregon girl born and bred; she goes to school in Beaverton, and lives on Sauvie's Island. Oh, and…((pause))…you living so close and all…you think I could move in with you and be YOUR muse? Please…I gotta get away from this girl…

-

DALTON: Review, my art galleries! Because Dakki is starting her senior year this Monday, and she needs your support now more than ever. …not than anyone ever worries about MY needs…


	5. WWSD?

The Boys of McKinley House

Chapter Five—W.W.S.D.?

-

LOVE IS A VESPERTINE BLOOM said the graffiti carved under one of the sinks in the bathroom at Rampion House, and the girl smiled, because even though it wasn't yet eight o'clock she already had something to add to her book.

Her name was Elisabeth: not Betsy or Lisa or Lizzy or Beth; not Betty; not Ellie; not Bess. Her name was Elisabeth, plain Elisabeth, Elisabeth Ami Dufant, and with a name like that, she couldn't have been anything but an absolute through-and-through romantic. Ever since she was twelve years old, she had been compiling a list of things love was like; she wrote them down every night in a water-stained black composition book. _Love is like falconry_._ Love is like oxygen_._ Only love is real_. She had over four hundred by now.

And it was only at Rampion House, she thought to herself with a smile, that you would find words like that carved behind the copper pipes; even inside one of the boys' bathrooms, in a school that prided itself so much in turning mere youths into splendid, clear-thinking young men, about the most romantic thing your could find scratched into the paint was REXANNE KRAKOWSKI BITES THE BIG ONE. Thank God, Elisabeth thought, for girls, and their love ises.

Elisabeth had come be under the sink this morning, looking up at the porcelain and holding onto the pipes, because of Benny Kittridge. At six-thirty in the morning, Miss Kittridge had decided to take a bath. Elisabeth had been brushing her teeth when Benny strolled in, feet bare, hair loose, yawning prettily, and proceeded to commandeer the chipped enamel bathtub by the window, the only one in Rampion House. She had steamed up the whole room and then stayed in the tub for nearly an hour, sitting there as if she was just _inviting _you to look at her.

And it was because of this that Elisabeth ended up washing her hair in the sink, and it was because of _this _that when Ms. Larsen, the house mother, banged into the bathroom singing "To Dream the Impossible Dream," Elisabeth was startled enough to bang her head against the faucet, experience a rush of blood to the head, and end up sitting on the floor, clinging to the edge of the sink and staring at LOVE IS A VESPERTINE BLOOM. Not that either Benny or Ms. Larsen seemed to notice any of this.

"Oh, Benjamina, _Darling!_" Ms. Larsen cried, swooping down and drawing a chair up next to the tub where Benny was soaking; Ms. Larsen herself was only the slightest bit more decently clothed. She had been a stage actress and B-movie star in the sixties and seventies, and still prided herself in her figure, which was, admittedly, something to write home about; even though she was well past forty, she still slept in filmy little negligees that left little to the imagine, and often could be seen going around in them at all hours of the morning and night; anyone who ever lived in Rampion House could probably remember Ms. Larsen, wearing a black lace teddy that left little to the imagination, sticking her head into their room to tell them, in a flurry of red hair and Chanel no. 22, to please get a move on their _Bhagavad Gita _reading because they wouldn't get far in life without a good education, now would they? Ms. Larsen herself had dropped out of the Oberlin Conservatory after a year to go to New York City and become a chorus girl on Broadway.

This morning, she was wearing a chiffon robe trimmed with blue feathers, blue satin mules, and very little else."We haven't talked since you came back to school, my dear," she was saying to Benny. "How are things? Are you going to try out for the musical this fall?"

"If I have time," Benny said dismissively, rubbing her wash cloth behind her ears. "I'm going to be awfully busy this fall, actually, Ms. Larsen."

"Darling, how many times do I have to tell you? Call me Peggy!" (No one else in the entire school was allowed to call Ms. Larsen _Peggy_.) "We're putting on _Cabaret _this semester, Benjamina dear, and I think there's the _perfect _part for you."

"Oh?" Coolly. "Which part?"

"Well, Sally Bowles, of course!"

Well, the female _lead_, of course, Elisabeth thought to herself with more than a little venom as she pulled herself up to her feet. _That _much went without saying. She applied a little toothpaste to her brush. No one had ever fought plaque and gingivitis with such aggression.

Margaret Larsen taught drama and voice, and Benny Kittridge was her favorite student. No one knew why. Benny couldn't sing, couldn't dance, couldn't act—or, rather, she _could _act: she acted beautifully whenever she wanted something, whether that was keeping a library book for an extra two weeks or getting a boy into her bed. Her consistent 3.8 grade point average was perfect evidence of this: at the end of every year, her textbooks were resold to the school as pristine as they had been that fall, not a single page creased, not a single passage underlined. Benny was a brilliant actress when it served her own needs, but put her up on stage and she went blank. She could remember her lines, but that was about it; you would have an easier time doing a scene with an Irish setter.

Nonetheless, she was always cast in the lead. Last year, the drama department had put on _Amadeus _in the fall and _Bye Bye Birdy _in the spring; Benny had played Constanze Mozart in the first and Kim McAfee in the second. To each she brought nothing more than a certain luminous, pale beauty which admittedly translated into an undeniable stage presence, and the most leaden rendition of "How Lovely to be a Woman" that anyone had ever heard. But Ms. Larsen loved her, and probably always would. Maybe she saw something of herself in Benny. After all, people back at Oberlin still told stories about the buxom redhead who used to table dance in a black vinyl catsuit.

But regardless of Ms. Larsen's penchant for playing favorites, Elisabeth Ami Dufant had _plans. _She had been practicing "Perfectly Marvelous" all summer and she had no doubts that she would blow Benny Kittridge out of the water at the audition. Whether that meant she would get the part or not was debatable. But still, she thought as she padded down the hallway toward her room, water splattering the linoleum as she rubbed her hair with Benny's towel: _stranger things have happened._

-

"Well," Carrie said, "I guess stranger things have happened."

"Does that mean you believe me?"

"No…"

Racetrack sighed. It figured. He finally did something to prove his masculinity, and everyone thought he was lying.

He had thought that telling Carrie, his co-anchor for the morning show at KUKE, the school radio station, would be a good start, mainly because he didn't think she actuallyleft the recording booth often enough to tell someone. Hardly anybody at Caldwell even knew about her existence; she looked down at the lawn through the window and watched as their all teenage dramas and mating rituals played out while she remained blissfully uninvolved. She said she preferred it that way, and frankly, Race couldn't blame her. Still, he worried about her sometimes. He wondered if she ever slept.

"Is it really that impossible for you to believe that I might have scored?"

"Well…" she paused. "No. Not _impossible_, I guess, just…well, you and Sylvy Golino?"

"Hard to imagine her knocked up, isn't it?"

"Not really," Carrie said. "I just always imagined it as an immaculate conception, that's all."

"Right."

"Also, if I ever thought you being with anyone, it was probably Benny Kittridge. From what I hear she's not at all particular."

"How do you know about Benny?"

"Everybody knows about Benny."

"But does everybody know I'm not getting any from Benny?"

"A great many."

They both managed to keep straight faces for about five seconds before they burst out laughing. "Carrie," Race said, "I think you might need to get out more."

"What, and end up like you?" As the single that was playing ended and the stylus slipped free of the last groove, Carrie slipped on her headphones and leaned forward to speak into the microphone.

"Good morning, Caldwell!" the radio voice went. "The birds are singing, the sun is shining—well, behind that thick wall of rain clouds, anyway—and you've made it through your first week at Caldwell. It's time to celebrate. So let me lay one on you from a real twentieth-century master who's sure to bring a smile to your face, in honor of my good good friend Mr. Racetrack Higgins, and you just sit back, relax, and listen to the teachings of KUKE."

It was always anyone's guess what Carrie would put on in the morning; her tastes ran from Carl Orff to "Sister Ray." Race leaned back and listened, and after a minute recognized the singer on the record Carrie had put on as a certain purveyor of desperate New Jersey love-rock. He was well trained to know. Springsteen albums were about the only things Rexanne ever listened to.

"_Then I got Mary pregnant and man, that was all she wrote, and for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat_," Bruce sang. "_We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest: no wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, no flowers, no wedding dress_."

"You are a cruel and brilliant person," Racetrack muttered.

Carrie just smiled and looked at the back of the record cover. "Have you told anyone yet?"

"I was kinda practicing on you, to be honest."

She nodded. "You might want to work on your delivery, then."

"You really don't believe me?"

"No, no, it's not that I don't, it's …" Carrie paused. "I think I'm just gonna wait until she starts to show a little, before I say anything, is all."

For the last week, Racetrack had been working on the right way to tell people about Sylvy. He was worried about his friends and his family, but what he dreaded most was talking to Izzy. He stood in front of the mirror every morning, knotting his tie as he tried to figure out how to break it to his sister that he had ruined the life of an innocent girl.

"Iz, have you ever done something that you later regretted?"

"Iz, sometimes the people we love disappoint us…"

"Izzy? Guess what? You get to be an aunt!"

He had counted on everything from shock to anger to tears, but for no one to even _believe _him seemed like an even worse reaction.

"What do you think I should say?" he asked.

"How about, 'hey guys, I knocked up the religion professor's daughter, what do you think of that?'"

And Racetrack nodded—of course. She was right; it was the only way to go. When you've gotten a girl pregnant, the one way you might really redeem yourself is to think: "What Would Springsteen Do?"

-

David S. Jacobs was fascinated by history, talented in math, and dutiful at the natural sciences. He had gotten A's all through high school, and enjoyed learning more than anything else, at least according to the essay he wrote, titled "Why I Enjoy Learning More Than Anything Else," which he sent into Caldwell as part of his application. But English was what he loved, and the English classroom was where he always felt truly at home; he would have called it his passion, if he had thought of himself as the kind of person who had things like that.

And so he was very, very happy when he found out that English was one of Caldwell's best programs, and his teacher, Professor Denton, was one of the best in the school. He remembered, sitting in the English 11 classroom in Scott House, looking out the window as the fog rose from the center lawn, English class at P.S. 118 with Mrs. Pancake. In one year they had faked their way, in class, through _Tess of the D'Urbervilles. _Like a strange pregnancy, those nine months had given birth to a lot of failing grades; David had the lingering suspicion that Mrs. Pancake had given him an _A_ simply because he was the only student in the class who knew how to say "D'Urbervilles" right.

This morning, instead of diagramming sentences or arguing about what a petard actually was (a discussion which had taken a week to get resolved in Mrs. Pancake's class), they were talking about art and its necessity, following a comment by Oscar Delancey about how, in his opinion, poetry was about the most useless thing in the world, and he didn't think it was worth anyone's trouble.

"Man creates art," Denton said, "in an attempt to answer the unanswerable questions in life. The most magnificent creations we can ever conceive of, whether they're made of marble, oils, or ink, are nothing more than a mortal's fragile attempt to understand the universe. I'm not saying writing, or any art, answers all questions, of course, because it doesn't. But there are some things we as humans will never know—"is there life after death?" "Does love last forever?" "Does God exist?" "Why am I here?" "Why they don't make pineapple Jell-O anymore?"

"Oh, I know the answer to that one," Kid Blink said, perking up.

"Really?" Denton asked. "Then please, Mr. Gustafson, enlighten us. We've got a few minutes of class left."

And so Kid Blink told his story:

WHY THEY DON'T MAKE PINEAPPLE JELL-O ANYMORE

_A story of horror, loss, and confusion, and the death of an American dessert_

Once upon a time two little boys named Bengt and Nicholas were out in the first boy's backyard, playing a wholesome, all-American game of lawn darts. Babysitting them that afternoon was a lovely young girl named Betsy True, who dreamed of moving to New York City and becoming a famous actress. That afternoon, Betsy was in the kitchen making pineapple Jell-O, Nicholas's favorite dessert. When the at last the Jell-O was nice and set and beautifully gelatinized, fragrant with the smell of the pineapple fields of Hawaii, Betsy opened the window and called to the boys, her voice clear and pure as a bell, two fateful words that would change their lives forever—_Jell-O time!_

Unfortunately, Betsy had caught them at a crucial moment of the game: Nicholas was about to throw his lawn dart, and such was his excitement at the prospect of pineapple Jell-O, his dart strayed from its target and went, instead, straight into Bengt's left eye

Bengt survived. His eye did not. Betsy developed a nervous condition in which she would wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, the words "refrigerate until firm" on her parched lips. Bengt gained an eye patch and a new name. And Bengt's mother, a woman far too beautiful and kind to have a name like "Gertrude," sued Kraft, Jell-O's parent company, for the loss of her son's eye. The settlement they awarded her was enough to buy a new house and car, treatment for both Betsy's nerves and Bengt's eye, pay for college for Bengt, Nicholas, and Betsy, and have enough money for a vacation besides. (Gertrude decided avoiding a tropical locale would be best for all of them, and so they went camping in Alaska for two weeks instead, and a good time was had by all.)

Betsy eventually made a full recovery, and, after attending the Juilliard School's Drama Division, became a successful stage actress in New York City. Bengt (now Kid Blink), whose left eye hadn't even been his favorite, anyway, decided to keep the patch instead of getting a glass eye put in, and could owe much of his later successes with girls to the dangerous edge it gave him. Bengt's mother didn't have to work for PBS anymore. All in all, one boy losing an eye brought many people happiness, except for one thing: in the media explosion that followed, Jell-O, shamed, removed pineapple indefinitely from its flavor lineup. And not a day went by that Kid Blink didn't look back, and regret his responsibility in that small piece of joy and happiness—a translucent piece of gelatin, the smell of faraway pineapple fields—being taken out of the world forever.

THE END.

"That was beautiful," Denton said, wiping a tear from his eye. Oscar seemed to go into a coughing fit; he wouldn't be able to talk to anyone for the rest of the day.

"And almost the entire thing is true," Mush said with a smile.

"I think we all need a little time to ourselves," Denton said. "Class dismissed early. Don't get used to it, boys." He turned around and began to rearrange some papers on his desk, looking terribly focused on the task at hand as the students filed out of the room.

At the end of his first week at Caldwell, David had realized, maybe for the first time in his life, that there was more to be learned outside of the classroom than there was inside it. He felt like he could spend a whole year in McKinley house just learning the anthropology, the stories and histories of the people at this school, and without going to class once he could learn enough to fill an entire book.

Of course it went without saying that he would never _actually _do something like that. He had to get into Columbia, after all.

Still, what he had heard fascinated him: Skittery's great nervous breakdown the spring of his freshman year, which David still didn't fully believe had happened; the Benny Kittridge museum; Professor Kloppman's decades-old, yet-to-be-finished biography of Abraham Lincoln, rumored to be seven volumes long, although no one had been allowed to see it in years; Ms. Larsen's stint as the hostess of a late-night horror movie show in Cincinnati before she came to the school. And the varied and sordid history of the Kelly children, the youngest of whom, Jack, lived down the hall from David's room, although David had yet to see him. There was Jamie Kelly, whose name still made the older girls at Rosemary swoon, and Rexanne Krakowski's thin body shudder; Boo Boo Kelly, the only girl, who had transferred to the Dalton school for her senior year at the same time that an English professor quietly resigned, the school choosing not to release his reasons for leaving the school; Chris Kelly, who had undergone a massive project to christen every classroom at Caldwell with his girlfriend Sunny; and Theodore Kelly, the oldest, who was currently a successful lawyer at Milbank Tweed, and did his best to distance himself from his family legacy.

It fascinated David, more than he would have liked to admit. When your father is a barber, you tend to take an interest in the excesses of the rich. He imagined Jack Kelly as a sophisticated, rebellious son who was out to prove that he was worth more than justhis family name; he would be intelligent and embittered and philosophical.David wondered when they would meet.

But David S. Jacobs had homework to do. And so, while everyone else on his floor went out to the Ironside with Race, who apparently had something very important to say, David, who doubted that whatever Racetrack had to say could be more important than Biology, stayed in his room with his science textbook as the sky outside went from gray to black. At exactly eight forty-one, he set his book down, and leaned back against the wall; he could hear every sound in the building. Walls contracting, faucets dripping, wind rattling an unlatched window. He was tired and content and at the same time felt more alone than he had in his entire life. It was time to brush his teeth.

David S. Jacobs was a strong believer in the importance of good oral hygiene, and he knew that even at Caldwell Academy, a school so dedicated to turning mere youths into splendid, clear-thinking young men, too many could go astray from the just and righteous path. The just and righteous path had three steps: brushing, flossing, and visiting the dentist every six months. If this path was followed, David was sure, then life would never get too complex, or too impossible to manage, and everything would turn out fine in the end. David followed the just and righteous path. His bicuspids were so perfect that they made some people believe in a higher power; his gums were like Greek temples.

And so, whenever he was feeling lost in life, as if he was alone in the world, he got his toothbrush, and his toothpaste, and his floss, and he brushed his teeth. Even if everything in his life was wrong, at least he could be secure in the knowledge that he was preventing cavities.

The bathrooms at Thaw were small and dark, and had been furnished during the years when avocado and goldenrod were popular colors. They were unabashedly hated. The whole thing wouldn't have been as bad if it wasn't common knowledge that over at Rosemary the girls had claw footed tubs and big, sunny windows looking out onto the orchard. As it was, though, the injustice of it all only semed worse. The only good thing about the bathroom on David's floor at McKinley house was that the fluorescent lighting was less than reliable, and often blinked out completely so that you couldn't see the backed-up toilets and puce shower stalls. It was that way when David got there on Friday night, toothbrush in hand; never one to be discouraged, he propped the door open with his foot so a little light could come in from the hallway.

He was about to start brushing his tongue when a loud groan came from the farthest stall down, followed by labored breathing and a few undisguised moans as whoever it was tried to gain back their composure. Then another groan, and a splash. Someone was puking his guts out.

After a moment the door swung open with a clang and a tall, sandy-haired boy stumbled blindly out, face dripping his sweat. He paused by the door, staring over David's shoulder at his reflection in the mirror, eyes red-rimmed, face flushed and feverish.

"Here," David said politely, holding out his toothbrush, and saying the only thing he could think of. "Stomach acid can damage your teeth."

The boy paused a moment, tried to swallow, and then vomited all over David's toothbrush before managing to lurch out of the room.

When David asked Race about it the next morning at over breakfast at the Ironside, Racetrack only laughed. "So you met Jack?"

"Jack?"

"Yeah, Jack Kelly. You've heard about him, right? His sister got an English teacher fired?"

David managed a nod.

"What would you say if I told you that his family spends more on their horses than your father probably makes in a year?"

"He threw up on my toothbrush."

"Don't worry; if I know Jack, he'll buy you another one. He's a great guy once you get to know him."

"He…threw up on my toothbrush, Race."

"Trust me, David S. Jacobs; if you get to have Jack as a friend, your toothbrush is about the last thing you'll worry about him having ruined."

-

**Author's Note: **This chapter was brought to by tuna noodle casserole and far too many late-night viewings of _Flashdance_. The recap, please, Charlie?

DALTON: ((reads)) Benny Kittridge is the intended victim of drama-department contra war, Racetrack is Bruce Springsteen, Davey practices good oral hygiene, and Jack is a wino.

Who only needs to be loved!

DALTON: …who only needs to be loved. And Kraft still doesn't make pineapple Jell-O. But there is hope.

Also, there is no reason why a welder by day and exotic dancer by night cannot make it as a real ballerina.

DALTON: Now _that's _a relief.

-

**Shout Outs!  
**_Part of this complete breakfast!_

**Rubix  
**A shopping montage! I _love _peppy shopping montages. Almost as much as I love dramatic sewing montages—for instance, the dramatic prom dress sewing montage in _Pretty in Pink_. Charlie's seen that movie about fourteen times. It apparently takes incredible masculinity to appreciate Molly Ringwald.

**Unknown-Dreams  
**I think that, no matter what happens, Race will _always _have problems…but that's why we love him so.

**Lady of Tir Na Nog  
**I'm so happy I'm not the only one who thinks Race would make an awesome dad. I kind of wish he was MY dad, actually, when I'm not busy lusting after him.

**Sapphy  
**Dearest Sapphykins, if I had any sex life at all I am sure I would not spend so very much time writing about sex. As it is I think my life is slightly less romantic than that of a sea cucumber.  
DALTON: The sea cucumber is actually a highly sensual animal.  
Oh, is it?  
DALTON: Yes! Actually, Kennedy and I had some sea cucumber for dinner the night we—

**FlatOutCrazy  
**Yes, Charlie and I will be together FOREVER. It's always been "till death do us part" for my annoying yet semi-cute preppie-muse and I…  
DALTON: Which is why I am contemplating a violent death.  
…Isn't he _sweet_?

**Platy  
**DALTON: If you're going to be smug, dearie, then come be smug with _me_. I have a whole club. We drink frozen margaritas and make fun of "The O.C." Tuesday nights. You in?

**Ccatt  
**DALTON: Intense? ((ponders)) …actually, I don't remember Dakki writing any camping scenes.  
Get it? Intense? IN TENTS? Get it?  
DALTON: Do you have ANY idea how lame we are?  
…yes.

**NadaZimri  
**If by "having fun" you mean "reading ten pounds of German philosophy every night and going to bed with my brain at the same consistency of tapioca" then I am.  
DALTON: Not that you actually DO ANY OF YOUR HOMEWORK…  
Yes, but Charlie, it's so tiring just to watch _you _read.

**Ershey  
**DALTON: ((whistles casually)) …now where would you get THAT idea?  
DAVID: Here's your knife!  
DALTON: We're just…uh…having some cake…

**Hotshot  
**I've come to the decision that writing a soap opera is just so much more fun (and easier) than writing realistic-type fiction. There's more sex, death, dishonesty, travesty, cross-dressing, and all that jazz. Also, there's nothing better than torturing the characters you love.

**MusiCath  
**I actually got those statistics about teen sex from a very special episode of "Doogie Howser, M.D." so they may not be strictly kosher. But it's always nice to be able to do research and see Max Casella at the same time.

**heraldtalia  
**Jack/David is my true calling in life, apart from this whole writing thing. My one goal is to convince EVERYONE that they are in love. So you can count on a lot of Jack, and a lot of David, and a LOT of improper conduct in the dorm rooms…and the supply closet…and the library…  
DALTON: The library! Woman, have you no shame?  
…"Woman"?

**Silky Conlon  
**DALTON: ((gasps, horrified)) I am NOT Severus Snape!  
He'll be crushed about that one for a week. He probably won't even come out of his room… ((pause)) …Thank you.

**madmbutterly713  
**Oh, Race'll bounce back. I know that boy too well.  
DALTON: …He's FICTIONAL.  
SO ARE YOU.

**Cakes  
**DALTON: Thank you. That was all I needed to hear.

**Written Sparks  
**((sighs with utter happiness)) Thank you. That was all _I _needed to hear.

**Shaturday  
**Oh, Saturday, remember the good old days (like two weeks ago) when we didn't even KNOW Knox was pregnant? And now he's about to deliver a little Overdalton! I have no idea how that happened.  
DALTON: It's interesting that you're questioning the gestation period, rather than the fact that a male can even GET pregnant.  
Well, you know, seahorses do.  
DALTON: …so you think Knox is a seahorse.  
Maybe just partly.  
DALTON: That would actually explain a lot…

**Cards  
**I make them up, mostly.  
DALTON: Someday she'll meet someone who knows Myanmar isn't in the outer reaches of Nebulon-5, and then she'll be in real trouble.

**ellaeternity  
**((grins ecstatically)) I made your butt numb! This is better than the Nobel prize for literature!  
AND I LOVE MOLLY RINGWALD! Like, more than is even healthy. When I was fifteen I dyed my hair red and it looked incredibly terrible but I just wandered around buying pink clothes and thinking "I AM Molly." Except that, you know, I totally would have chosen the Duck Man.

**Veritas4Eternity  
**Lord, I cannot even remember the last time I wrote something that WASN'T Jack/David slash. It would be a miracle if this wasn't. But it is. And there will be sparks. Because you can't start a fire without a spark. Even if we're just dancing in the dark. ((nods sagely))  
DALTON: …you're an idiot.  
Yes.

-

DALTON: Review! Or we'll sic Benny on you.


	6. The Ice Queen Cometh

The Boys of McKinley House  
Chapter Six—The Ice Queen Cometh

-

Three o'clock in the morning at one of the most exclusive prep schools in the country, and half a dozen boys were huddled around a television set that had once broadcast the Watergate hearings, watching a movie about radioactive cannibals.

"Radioactive _mutant _cannibals," Blink corrected absentmindedly, passing a bottle back to David as he adjusted the rabbit ears.

"Is this alcohol?" David asked. "We're not allowed to have alcohol."

"It's celery tonic."

"Oh. I see." He took a sip of it. "Why?"

"There's a whole case of it in one of the storage closets downstairs," Mush explained. "It's the one thing they won't look for if it goes missing."

"And we need refreshments," Snitch added helpfully.

"Something about Ms. Larsen…" Mush chipped in.

"Just makes your mouth go dry," Snitch finished, pressing his bottle of celery tonic to his forehead.

"Quiet," Kid Blink whispered. "The best part's coming up."

All of them—Snitch, Skittery, Mush, and now David—were in the room that Kid Blink shared with a boy named Specs. Something about the school's drama teacher, something about a late-night horror movie program broadcast out of Corvallis. Up on screen, a full-figured redhead, clad in a shocking pink leotard and white go-go boots, revved the engine of a chainsaw and glared threateningly at a man who looked like his face had been glued on backwards.

"You'd best be leaving town now, Mutant Bob," she said in a heavy Swedish accent. "The people of Silver Gully aren't afraid of your kind anymore."

"I'll get you for this someday, Sweetheart O'Brien!" Mutant Bob roared through what must have been his mouth.

"But not today," Sweetheart said, thrusting her chest out an extra fraction of an inch. All the boys clapped gleefully, cheering for the side of goodness and light.

"I left Mrs. Pancake for this?" David asked. Kid Blink shushed him.

"How many times have you _seen _this movie?" Specs muttered from his place on the bed, where he was trying his hardest to get some work done.

"Seven or eight," Blink said, taking a swig of celery tonic.

"Why do you keep watching it? It's terrible. It's not like the ending _changes, _or anything. Sweetheart O'Brien always saves the town. There's no surprise."

Every other boy in the room rolled his eyes. "Oh, Specs," Skittery said. "We have so much to teach you."

Specs just grumbled and went back to his biology reading.

Up on screen, as Sweetheart O'Brien walked into the sunset, leaving Silver Gully behind to protect the next town down the line from the ever-present threat of Mutant Bob, a title flashed across the screen: _Starring Medda Larkson, the Swedish Meadowlark. _

"Now, Davey," Blink said, turning around in his chair, "where would you guess that SwedishMeadowlark is today?"

"Well," David said, "I'm sure she still has a vendetta going with Mutant Bob and his henchmen. I imagine she's pretty occupied with that."

"What would you say if I were to tell you she was at Caldwell?"

"…What about Mutant Bob?"

"Lacrosse coach," Blink said dismissively. "You have seen Ms. Larsen around campus, haven't you? She's the drama and voice teacher--kind of old, red hair, miraculously self-supporting breasts?"

"I think I have," David said.

"Yeah, she's the one."

"You're joking." But even as David said it, he realized that Ms. Larsen wouldn't have looked at all out of place in a shocking pink leotard and white go-go boots.

"I'm not," said Blink. "She's been at Caldwell…I think since around the time Jack's older sister was asked to leave. You've heard about that already, of course. Boo Boo. Ask me to tell you about _her _sometime." He paused, taking a pull from his bottle, a kind of wistful gleam in his eyes. Or eye, David thought to himself, blushing a little.

"Anyway," Blink continued, "we always thought there was something strange about Ms. Larsen—she told us she used to be a dancer, on Broadway, and never anything else about what she did before she came to the school—but Race was the first one to figure it out. Last fall term, he calls Jack up at about two in the morning, wakes up poor Skittery—"

"I was already up that night," Skittery interjected.

"Oh? Vamp of Savannah?"

"Vamp of Savannah."

These boys spoke a different _language_, David realized.

"So Race calls Jack up," Blink told David, "says '"you'd best be leaving town now, Mutant Bob,"—turn to channel five, Jack,' and hangs up. And of course it didn't take long for Jack, who _is _a smart kind of kid, even if he's not a genius like me, to realize there was a certain resemblance between Ms. Margaret Larsen of the drama department and Medda Larkson, Swedish Meadowlark, slayer of mutant cannibals." Blink smiled. "What do you think of that?"

David thought, and said as much, that he probably wouldn't like to come in close contact with Ms. Swedish Meadowlark for a while. An answer which, of course, left the boys of McKinley house no choice but to drag him over to the performing arts building that very afternoon.

-

At Caldwell, auditions for the fall musical weren't just an item of interest for the drama crowd. They were a school-wide event. Everyone came to them, whether they had any vague interest in the play or not. It wasn't that Caldwell had a particularly good drama program, or that the productions it put on were especially unique. It was simply the only school in the state of Oregon whose drama teacher owned a rhinestone bustier.

Every year, to encourage new students to get involved in performing arts, Ms. Larsen squeezed into her old costume and sang "It's All the Same" up on stage in the main theater—since, after all, she _had _played Aldonza in the national tour of _Man of La Mancha_, back in 1966—and every year, what seemed like the entire student body showed up to watch, filling in every seat, lining up on the staircases, backing up to the doorways, spilling into the hall. David, Race, Blink, and all the other boys had shown up an hour early so they could sit in front, even though Jack was the only one of their friends who was actually auditioning for the play. He was backstage, practicing his lines, ignoring the fact that a part was almost guaranteed to him anyway. After Benny Kittridge, he was Ms. Larsen's favorite student, although he actually had some talent.

With a flourish, Ms. Larsen hit the high note of the song, holding it until the glass framing a picture of Kitty Winn, a 1977 graduate who was now dancing on Broadway, threatened to shatter. Smiling at the thunderous applause—regardless of her turn as Sweetheart O'Brien, she had always loved being on the stage more than anything else—Ms. Larsen took a deep bow, and three-fourths of her audience, content that they had seen as far down her shirt as they could, filed out.

"Can we leave now?" David asked hopefully.

"And miss Jack's audition?" Race said. "Are you kidding?"

"No."

"Thank you, thank you," Ms. Larsen said graciously, "but really, today belongs to the students. Now, as always, we'll start with those who have signed up beforehand, but if anyone is moved by the spirit, so to speak, then we can certainly make space for walk-ins. And now, to begin, Miss Benjamina Kittridge."

Benny sauntered out from backstage. She was wearing a demure silk dress, pale blue, unbuttoned down to her collarbone, its hem landing at the tops of her thighs. Without any kind of ceremony or shyness, she handed her music to Iris, the pianist, strolled over to the chair that had been placed in the middle of the stage, and straddled it from behind, her long legs wrapping around the front. There could be heard, throughout the theater, the sound of a hundred and twenty boys craning their necks to get a better look at Benny Kittridge's underwear.

"You have to understand the way I am, Mein Herr," Benny said flatly. "A tiger is a tiger, not a lamb, Mein Herr. You'll never turn the vinegar to jam, Mein Herr. So I do, what I do, when I'm through, then I'm through, and I'm through…toodle-oo."

"Is she even singing?" David asked.

"Who cares?" said Snitch.

It was a short song, but the way Benny sang it, her voice empty of even the slightest hint of feeling or inflection, it seemed to last a very long time. Still, for whatever reason, everyone else seemed to be enjoying it. Perhaps, David thought to himself, it was just a modern sort of rendition, and he simply didn't know enough to appreciate it. Or perhaps it was simply the fact that Benny Kittridge didn't seem to be wearing a bra.

"Farewell, Mein Lieber Herr, it was a fine affair, but now it's over," Benny finished. "And though I used to care, I need the open air. You're better off without me, Mein Herr." With that, she stood, took a bow, and went over to sit down next to Ms. Larsen, who was all but glowing with pride.

David thought that perhaps the drama department really _was _better off without Benny Kittridge, and said as much.

"You'll feel differently after you've spent the night in her room," Blink said. "When _that _happens—"

"Wait, wait, wait," David said. "_When_? What happened to _if_?"

Blink shrugged. "It happens to everyone eventually."

Regardless of the stories he had heard about Benny, David knew that couldn't be true. "Benny Kittridge," he said, "can not have slept with _everyone_."

"Well, she's slept with me," said Blink.

"And me," said Skittery.

"And me," said Mush.

"And me," said Snitch.

"And me," said Specs.

Racetrack, at the moment, seemed to be very interested in his rain boots.

"Well," Blink amended. "_Almost _everyone. But Race has more important things to worry about right now. I'm sure that, given this kind of change in lifestyle, he doesn't mind a _bit _that he never got to have his chance with Benny."

"Yes I do," Racetrack muttered.

"Well, see, that's just not cool at all."

"Come on, Blink, be nice to Race," Snitch admonished. "I bet you'd have a hard time acting mature, too, if your parents still said you were twelve when they went to the movies so they don't have to pay for an adult ticket."

Kid Blink tried very, very hard not to laugh. "You're kidding," he managed.

"They say he's Izzy's younger brother," Snitch said. Racetrack threw his mitten at him.

David had learned about Race and Sylvy at breakfast the day before, and he seemed to be the only person in the entire school who was surprised at the news. Somehow, during all the fevered nights he had spent looking at the Caldwell view book, he had managed to convince himself that the school was nothing less than the intellectual utopia the literature presented it as: princesses as beautiful as they were kind, classrooms electric with brilliance, libraries bursting with knowledge waiting to be discovered, bare trees at night, rain. Instead, it was full of people who slept around and ruined each others' lives and threw up on your toothbrush. He hoped things got better after the first week.

"Can we leave now?" David asked.

"No."

"Um, Race?" Blink asked. "Why are you wearing mittens? It's sixty degrees out. And you'reeighteen years old." He paused as he scrutinized the mitten Racetrack had thrown at Snitch, which appeared to be hand-knit with a pattern of ducklings.

"…Race?"

"Shut up, Blink."

"Your mom made these for you, didn't she?"

"Shut up, Blink."

"Do you think she could make some for me? My hands get awfully cold when I'm working up in the physics lab with Professor Salt, and…"

"SHUT UP, BLINK."

"Okay, okay," Blink said, handing Race's mitten back to him. "…But really, could you ask her about it? I really do have problems keeping my hands warm."

A few more girls came out to audition, but most of them seemed to just go through the moves, knowing, most likely, that Benny would get the main role no matter _what _they did. Halfway through, a girl with dark hair and glasses did an impressive rendition of "Perfectly Marvelous"—her voice was really astonishing for one so small—but Benny had only to turn the pale bloom of her face towards Ms. Larsen, a look of utter heartbreak in her blue eyes, for the girl to lose her any chance of winning Benny's part away from her.

"Can we leave now?" David asked.

"_No_."

"Quiet," Mush hushed them (it had to happen sometime). "Here comes Jack."

David had decided before he even came to the theater building that Jack couldn't be much better as an actor than Benny was. He just didn't see someone who went around throwing up on toothbrushes as being especially skilled in the dramatic arts. And so it came as almost an insult to him, really, when Jack turned out to be _brilliant_. He seemed so at ease onstage, in a way David never thought he could be; he rolled his shirtsleeves up and looked out over the heads of at least a hundred people as if he was looking at old friends. He recited something from a Neil Simon play, but it wasn't even _reciting, _really. It didn't seem like he was acting. He just _was _the character. It was so natural. The monologue was a funny one, and everyone laughed in all the right places, and the girls smiled up at him, looking as if they were in love. Benny frowned and crossed and recrossed her legs. When it was over, Jack took a leisurely bow, and leapt down from the stage. Racetrack clapped his mittened hands.

"Jack," Kid Blink said, as the man of the hour slid into the seat next to David's, "it never ceases to amaze me that two people as incredibly dull as your parents managed to end up with a kid like you. If it weren't for Boo Boo being your sister I'd think you were adopted into that family."

"Sometimes I wish I was," Jack laughed

"T. Senior still wants you to go to law school?"

"Of course," Jack said. "Haven't you ever heard him go on one of his tirades about acting?"

"Sure, but refresh my memory."

"He has decided, by this point," Jack said, looking meditatively at the water stained ceiling of the auditorium, "that anyone who ever made a career out of acting was a faggot. And no son of Ted Kelly's is a faggot."

No matter how much frustration his father's way of thinking may have caused him in the past, though, Jack was happy now; he was never more at home than when he was near a stage. Smiling, he glanced down from the ceiling, and his gaze was caughtby David Jacobs, who was at the moment doing his best to completely remove himself from the situation.

"Hi," he said, extending a hand, "I'm Jack Kelly. Have we met?"

The words _You threw up on my toothbrush _sprung immediately to mind, but before David managed to speak up, his vision was drawn for some reason to Jack's front teeth. He had never seen anything like them before. They came down white and straight in the front, then disappeared at the sides, his incisors almost nonexistent, and dipped down again in the region of his molars. The perfection of their crookedness was more beautiful than any result of conventional orthodontia. Looking at them, David felt like he was staring into the eyes of God. Teeth of God, he corrected himself. Looking at Jack's teeth was like reading poetry.

"What's your name?" Jack asked, and David realized they had been shaking hands for a good ten seconds.

"Uh…Jacobs. David. David Jacobs. Heh. That's my name." His face hot, he ripped his eyes away from Jack's mouth and glared down at his shoes, only to realize to his horror that he was wearing an old pair of Sarah's sweat socks.

"Oh, sure," Jack said. "I've heard about you. You're the new Marshall Taylor scholarship, right?"

David nodded.

"Yeah, I thought so. You know, you look so familiar…but I just can't think of where I've seen you before. Oh, well." Jack smiled, humming cheerfully as he looked up onstage, where a short boy in an Atlanta Braves cap was singing "Easy to be Hard."

"Can we leave now?" David mumbled.

"NO!" everyone shouted at once.

The next few hours were hell on earth. David had to somehow figure out a way to avoid talking to Jack, for fear of saying something stupid, but at the same time appear outgoing and smart and funny—and the whole time wondering why he wanted so badly to make friends with this careless rich boy who had acted completely awful on their first meeting, and now didn't even remember him. As he sunk down into his seat, David reminded himself over and over again about how he had had to walk all the way into town on Saturday afternoon to buy a new toothbrush at the Red Apple Market—ninety-nine cents, and all they had left was _pink_—but every time he looked up at Jack, all he wanted to do was find a new way toimpress him. It was awful.

Finally, after what felt like years but was actually two hours and forty-one minutes, the last of the hopefulshad auditioned, and everyone in the audience had filed out except for Jack, David, Specs Mush, Skittery, Kid Blink, and Race--Racehaving fallen asleep nearly an hour ago, his face mostly hidden by a pair of enormous pink earmuffs. Jack and Benny were the only actors who had stayed on; it more or less went without saying that they would have the main roles, and Ms. Larsen wanted to work with them a little before they called it a day.

They were up onstage, dancing together under the spotlight while all the boys of McKinley house looked on. Every few moments Ms. Larsen glared irritably at the observers in the front row, but they didn't seem to take any notice. Jack was moving stiffly, constantly glancing away as if counting the minutes until it was over. And Benny was practically making love to him right there on the stage: wrapping a long, slender leg around his waist, guiding his hand under her dress, reaching up to tug gently on his earlobe with her porcelain-white teeth.

"Benny," he said, uncomfortably, "what are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" she murmured, sliding her hand under the waistband of his trousers.

Jack reached down and grabbed her wrist. "Benny. Don't. For God's sake, we're in front of your house mother. My friends are watching us—"

"Oh, it's nothing they haven't seen before."

"Don't do this, Benny."

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she leaned back, looking at him dead on with her pale blue eyes. "Doesn't this body just drive you wild with desire?" she said, loud enough for the whole auditorium to hear.

"Oh, good!" Ms. Larsen said excitedly, clapping her hands together. "Benjamina, I had no idea you already knew some of your lines!"

"It's a very nice body," Jack admitted.

"And don't you want to make love to me again, Jack?" Benny asked plaintively, sliding a hand under his dress shirt, and up the flat of his back.

"To be perfectly honest, Benny, I'd rather fuck one of the mannequins in the window displays at Bloomindale's. You've got about as much warmth and compassion in that beautiful body of yours."

As if she had been bitten, Benny instantly sprung away from him, her pale cheeks burning pink. "I'm sorry, Ms. Larsen," she said, "I can't do this with him."

"But Benjamina, you've acted with Jack many times before, and you've always done so well together! What could possibly be the matter?"

"It just—isn't—working out!" Benny shouted in frustration, and Jack realized with a slight shock that she was actually _flustered._

"Well, what do you suggest we do?"

"I want someone else to play Brian," Benny said, already regaining her calmness.

"But Jack is the most experienced actor in the school, Benjamina. Who—"

"I want that boy," Benny said, pointing at someone in the front row, and David realized, to his utter horror, that she was looking right at him.

"Can we leave _now_?" David hissed.

"I'm sorry," Ms. Larsen said, stepping to the front of the stage as she tried to get a good look at David. "I don't think we've ever met. What's your name?"

"David Jacobs," David said miserably. "I'm new this year."

"Ah," Ms. Larsen said. "Have you ever acted before?"

"No."

"I want him," Benny whispered.

"Well," Ms. Larsen sighed, "why don't you come up onstage, do a few scenes, and we'll see how you and Benjamina work together. You're not expected anywhere tonight, are you?"

"Well, I—"

"Fine. Come up, then, and let's see how good you are. Don't worry, this will only take a few minutes."

"Sure thing, Sweetheart O'Brien," David muttered under his breath.

"_What was that_?"

"He said, if he claimed he hadn't always wanted to be on the stage, he'd be _lyin_'," Jack said, smiling at David as he leapt down from the stage and went to sit with his friends, and David walked into the lions' den.

Of course, in the world of the Swedish Meadowlark, "a few minutes" meant "an hour and twenty-four minutes." David read lines with Benny. He danced with Benny. He stage-kissed Benny. For the first time in his life, he put a lot of effort into failing miserably, and he had to wonder why, when a beautiful girl was more or less _throwing _herself at him, he wanted nothing more than to get away from her, and could think of no better way of spending his evening than making friends with the boy who had thrown up on his toothbrush. It was a confusing night all around.

Finally, things seemed to be winding down. Racetrack was snoring, and Blink and Mush had dozed off on each others' shoulders; Skittery had gone to call Bryce on the pay phone in the hall, and Specs was trying to do his Calculus homework. Jack was the only one who was really watching, leaning forward, occasionally smiling and showing the world a glimpse of his beautiful teeth.

"Well," said Ms. Larsen, "I think I've seen enough." And David waited for her to tell him that he was the worst actor she had seen in her entire life, even worse than the infamous Mutant Bob.

"Quite frankly, your abilities are…phenomenal," she said. "You've captured the essence of the character so perfectly…the awkwardness, the self-conscious intellectualism…the sexual confusion. Simply, it's brilliant. I'm amazed that you have no prior experience. Between you and me, I've never seen such natural talent in my entire life." She sighed as if a great dream of hers had finally come true, and put a hand to her ample bosom. "Congratulations, David Jacobs. The part is yours."

David felt like dying; all he could do was stare off into the distance, blinded by the lights. As she strolled off the stage, shrugging her coat on as she walked, Benny Kittridge smiled devilishly and leaned over to him as she walked past, whispering in his ear.

"You've got a minute left to fall in love," she said, and she was gone, a rush of perfume and chill beauty on that early September night.

The rest of the boys began to file out, Racetrack carefully winding a huge wool scarf around his head before zipping up an enormousorange parka, the kind you wore to refill the bird feeders in Antarctica. Jack was the only one who didn't leave. His hands thrust deep into his pockets, he climbed up onto the stage, smiling pleasantly at David, who was still standing there, dumbstruck, a good inch of his older sister's socks showing above the tops of his shoes.

"I think you just saved my life," Jack said.

"Oh. You're welcome."

"We've probably missed dinner by now," he said, checking his watch. "You want to go down to the Ironside, my treat? I mean, I owe you one, after that. I'll buy you a piece of pie."

"Okay."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. …Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Can we leave now?"

"Yeah, Dave. We can."

-

**Author's Note: **NEWSIE CHOIR: Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Saaaaturdayyy…Happy birthday to you!

DALTON: I made everyone cupcakes! …Manly ones.

It just so happens that my dearest fellow genii Saturday (known in "The Boys of McKinley House" as Izzy Higgins, seducer of mathletes) is turning fifteen this fourteenth of October, so this chapter of the fic is a birthday present, of sorts. Its writing was aided by Tylenol, Afrin, and lots and lots of Dayquil. I've gone and caught a bit of a sniffle. BUT I STILL WROTE! For my art is my life.

DALTON: You mean your trying-to-maneuver-Jack-and-David-into-having-sex is your life.

…Yes.

DALTON: Okay. Just clearing that up.

-

**Shout Outs!**

**Unknown-Dreams  
**I'm glad that, even at two in the morning, that chapter made sense, because I was worrying it would be completely confusing even in the middle of the day…what with all the toothbrush-vomit and Jell-O myths…  
I hope this chapter came somewhat closer to coherency, but somehow, I doubt that. Oh well. As long as you enjoyed it, my dear!

**FlatOutCrazy  
**I, too, enjoy oral hygiene far too much. This is because, basically, all the really nerdy aspects of my personality have been given to David Jacobs in this fic. Which really isn't fair of me, I suppose—but you have to give them to SOMEONE.  
Also, if Christian Bale hurled on my toothbrush, I'd sell it on eBay and buy a house in Mexico with the profits.

**The Noble Platypus  
**Well, I'm updating this thing at one in the morning on a school night when I have a very bad case of the sniffles. Honestly, it isn't my fault that I respond to cold medicine like it's crystal meth.

**Lady of Tir Na Nog  
**Actually, I've always been sort of partial to avocado green. It's a highly underrated color scheme, as refrigerators go. And for your countertops, you can have goldenrod. All you need is a fondue set and you can pretend it's 1977 all over again.

**Verita4Eternity  
**DALTON: Well, in Dakki's own pathetic world, it is less "a thing" so much as "a love to end all loves," but…well, watching _Newsies _about four thousand times does that kind of thing to you, I guess.

**ella eternity  
**Oh, my god, Dunk-A-Roos. I haven't thought about those in like eight years. ((sobs))  
Speaking of extinct foods, do you remember Vienetta ice cream? They used to have commercials for it when I was in grade school: it was this ice cream novelty item that was sort of like a lasagna, but made out of ice cream, and in the commercials they used to just have this perfect hand cutting a slice of it. I always wanted to try it, and now I can't find it anywhere. It's one of the greatest regrets of my life.

**madmbutterfly713  
**You can run, but you can't hide, from Benny Kittridge…it's funny how that turned out. She started out as this really minor character I sort of hated, and now I love her and write about her in almost every chapter. And I'm sure everyone is very tired of reading about her, too. But…at least I made at least once person fall out of their chair.

**Cakes  
**Thanks! ((curtsies like Ms. Larsen))

**Silky Conlon  
**Well, I wouldn't make a very good Severus Snape. I'm too cute. Right, Charlie?  
DALTON: Um…  
Right, Charlie?  
DALTON: I think I left the refrigerator open gotta go bye! ((runs off))  
…How strange.

**Ccatt  
**Thanks! ((curtsies like Ms. Larsen))

**NadaZimri  
**I often wonder the same thing myself. I was reading a text for that class the other day and I found a footnote that was THREE PAGES LONG. The world never ceases to amaze me.

**ershey  
**DALTON: GOD DAMMIT! Now I have to bake a cake. …Davey, I TOLD you we should have just poisoned her.  
Actually, boys, I'm more in the mood for some pineapple Jell-O right about now.

**Sapphy  
**Oh God. I sense a _Titanic _reenactment brewing.  
DALTON: KENNEDY! ATTEMPT SUICIDE! THEN I'LL SAVE YOU AND WE CAN HAVE A WHIRLWIND ROMANCE THAT CHALLENGED THE MORES OF SOCIETY!  
…I should never have bought him that stupid tape for his birthday.

**Heraldtalia  
**The possibilities in a library are endless. Especially if there is a photocopier.  
Also, by the end of this fic, you will probably be sorry you ever wondered about the Kelly kids, because I will probably go into exhaustive detail about them. I have family trees and everything. It's really incredibly sad.

**Saturday  
**HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY LOVE!  
DALTON: You know, you already sent her, like, two books and a letter.  
Yeah…  
DALTON: You know what this means.  
Yeah, I do.  
DALTON: ((grins)) You are SUCH an Oregonian rapist.  
…I think I've come to accept that by now.

**Dragonsong1  
**Oh, thank you…but Charlie's really the one who should be thanked. He was wonderful about organizing all of this. He even made a flow chart. Right now he's color-coding my sock drawer.  
DALTON: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH CHARTREUSE POLKA DOTS?  
…Living with me hasn't been very easy for him, I'm afraid…

-

DALTON: Review! Or Jack will blind you with the glory of his teeth.


	7. Freshly Squeezed

The Boys of McKinley House  
Chapter Seven—Freshly Squeezed

-

Snitch was from Iowa. It wasn't his fault. His father was from Iowa, and his father's father, and his father's father's father. Iowa wasn't something you chose. Iowa chose you.

His upbringing had certain benefits, of course: he grew up with clean air, fluoridated water, and an open-mindedness that could only come from someone who had been raised eating his Jell-O with mayonnaise. Snitch was forthright, honest, kind, and good. You couldn't ask for much more in a friend.

He was also the worst liar in the entire world, and even David, who had been at the school for only a few weeks, could tell in an instant when he was lying. It would take David months to learn how Skittery always bit his lip when he wasn't telling the truth, how the tips of Racetrack's ears turned pink, and how Jack's tongue suddenly seemed to swell to twice its size, but with Snitch, he never had any trouble. So when, one chilly Sunday midway through October, Snitch approached him at the end of rehearsals, it didn't take David long to figure out that he was up to _something_.

"Why, hello, David," Snitch said, brightly. "What do you say about joining me for a pleasant movie tonight?"

"What's the catch?" David sighed, in as world-weary a manner as someone whose father is a barber can.

"Catch?" Snitch asked, taking a casual step backwards and tripping over his shoelace. "No catch," he managed.

"Snitch."

"Oh, all right. It's eighty straight minutes of zombies exploding and melting and gnawing their own hands off, but no one else will go with me, Dave. Please?"

"No."

"I'll steal your floss."

"You wouldn't," David said, scandalized.

"No, I wouldn't, but will you go with me?"

"Snitch, to be honest, I'd rather—"

But Snitch never did find out what David would rather do, because at that moment Benny Kittridge skipped over, breathless and flushed, her pale eyes shining.

"Hi, Davey," she breathed.

"Hello, Benny," David said uncomfortably.

"Wasn't that a great rehearsal?" she said. "Gosh, I thought it was just…great. You know, everyone thinks Jack's such a fantastic actor, but I think you're even better. When we open this Christmas, everyone's going to be just _blown away_."

"Thank you, Benny."

Benny just smiled brightly and leaned against David, placing a hand on his chest. It was an unnaturally chilly October, and everyone had layered up against the cold—Racetrack had come to school that day wearing long underwear, snow boots, a down parka, earmuffs, and four identical moss-green sweaters, one on top of the other. David was shivering in his cheap blue blazer, but his ankles, at least, were warm in a pair of his father's old hiking socks. And Benny, as usual, was dressed in the height of fashion: her white-gold hair was tied back with a green satin ribbon, and beneath her green wool coat she seemed to be wearing all of the lovely things she owned, mostly scarves and stockings, with a blouse or a skirt thrown in every once in a while. She was wearing enough layers to fend off the worst cold, but it was all split down the middle, every button and lace left undone. When she leaned against David, he could feel the pulse that made itself known where Benny's heart should have been.

"So," Benny said innocently, "what are you boys up to this evening?"

"We're seeing a movie," Snitch said, with miserable truthfulness.

"Oh, I _love _movies!" Benny said brightly. "I love the actors and actresses and the costumes and the music and the theaters and—"

"But you wouldn't like it," David cut in desperately. "Would she, Snitch?"

"Oh, no," said Snitch. "It's disgusting."

"It's all…zombies," David added.

"And blood."

"And guts."

"And really horribly gratuitous violence."

"And…bad things," David finished lamely. "That girls don't like."

"Well," said Benny sweetly, taking David's hand in hers, "I think you'll find, Davey, that I'm _really_ not like most girls."

-

There was no dissuading her, of course. Snitch knew that just as well as anyone else. He had first met Benny at freshman orientation two years ago, when he was fresh out of Iowa, his teeth strong and fluoridated, his sneakers glowing with Midwestern innocence. Benny had just left behind her first real boyfriend, a high-school senior named Mike Gottlieb who had been whole, healthy, and charming when he first met Benny, and graduated nine months later a nervous wreck after she left him for a hockey player named Conrad. Mike had been a golden son, the boy everyone loved, kind, intelligent, a straight-A student headed for the University of Michigan in the fall, and he had been ruined by a thirteen-year-old girl. Benny's parents had been almost glad to send their daughter away to St. Helens: at the end of August, Mike climbed on top of his roof, claiming he would jump unless Benny said she would take him back. Benny, who was currently necking in the gym showers with Conrad the hockey player, didn't. Mike jumped.

And so Benny came to Caldwell, cruelly separated from Conrad and with Mike's near-death (he broke his wrist and bruised his ribs) hanging over her head. She swore to seduce the first boy she saw, and that boy happened to be Snitch. He lasted three days, until the last night of orientation, when they christened his narrow dorm bed, and Benny began her career. And now David was what she wanted. Snitch knew it was only a matter of time.

Benny, David and Snitch went to the Columbia Theatre in town, the same place that Snitch went every Sunday night, usually by himself: it was the only place in the county to have earned the dubious distinction of showing absolutely _anything _it came across. Plus, tickets cost only a dollar and a quarter. Snitch loved movies indiscriminately—he wanted to be a director—and would take in trash and high art together, giving _The Girl in Gold Boots _the same scrutiny and consideration as _Satyricon_. He would watch anything, and love anything, but what he adored most were horror movies: Italian giallos, psychological thrillers, Vincent Price B-movies, American splatter films. He would come back to McKinley late on a Sunday night after taking in a Mario Bava triple-feature, raving about a scene where a girl had her heart ripped out or worse, and it never ceased to perplex his friends that this kind, gentle, self-effacing boy from Iowa City would delight so much in so many violent deaths.

On this fine night in October, they went in for a gory new release set in a cabin in the woods, full of chainsaws and blood and demonic possession. David left halfway through to throw up, and when he got back, Benny took his hand in hers and guided it under her sweater. Snitch remained completely oblivious, rapturously absorbed in the stereophonic slaughter onscreen.

"Anybody hungry?" Snitch asked, as they walked out of the theater.

"Starving," Benny said, sidling up next to David.

They went to the Ironside Café; it was late, and they were the only patrons there. The coffee was somewhere between tepid and stone cold, which meant Rexanne, the bad waitress, was happy. It was only if the service was good that you knew something was wrong. They didn't have to wait quite an hour for her to come around to take their orders, and while they waited, they talked about the career of the Swedish Meadowlark—The Columbia was going to do a Sweetheart O'Brien retrospective in November—and Benny played "Memories" on the jukebox and was funny and engaging and tried her best to relieve David of his virginity before the chorus.

"What'll it be?" Rexanne asked, leaning against the jukebox as she sized up David's hard-on.

"I'll have the chicken fried steak, with hash browns and sausage, and four eggs instead of three if you can do it, make sure the yolks are runny, that's sunny-side up, and also I'd like to have a short stack of pancakes, and bacon and sausage as well but I'd like the syrup for that to be heated, and a side order of biscuits and gravy, too…—oh, and coffee." Benny said all this in one breath, handing over the menu as she surreptitiously placed a hand over David's bulging crotch.

"What kind of toast you want with that?" Rexanne asked, unfazed.

"Whole wheat," Benny murmured seductively.

Rexanne snapped her gum. "You want orange juice?"

Benny leaned forward, smiling sweetly. "Yes," she said. "But only if it's …freshly squeezed."

Rexanne smiled just as sweetly. "And for the gentleman?"

"Um…just some coffee," David managed, finally wresting Benny's hand away from his pants.

"Hey, big spender. And for you?" She turned to Snitch.

"I'll…I'll have what she's having," Snitch said, still hypnotized by Benny's every move.

Here he had thought he had this girl all figured out, and now she surprised him again—she acted so shallow and vacant, as if she contemplated suicide by overdose of Alka-Seltzers if she gained so much of an extra ounce, and now here she was, eating like a hog before the slaughter. Sitting there in a liver-red booth, watching her all but straddle David Jacobs, Snitch fell in love with Benny Kittridge for the first time, hopelessly and head-over-heels.

"That waitress," Benny said confidentially, playing with David's hair, "I know for a fact, is sleeping around with just about every boy in town."

"Oh, really?" asked Snitch, interested.

"Complete white trash. Her brother has a meth lab and she's so high half the time she can't tell left from right. And a few years ago," Benny added, lowering her voice, "she was _stalking _Jack's older brother Jamie, asking him for money, saying she was preggers with his kid. She's _practically _a prostitute."

"Benny," David said tiredly, "the irony of you saying that is absolutely incredible."

It was one of the only truly mean things David had said in his entire life, and he regretted it as soon as it passed through his lips. Benny sprang back from him, looking as if he'd just hit her. A single tear rolled down her cheek. "David," she whispered.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, Benny, I didn't mean—"

"You know," she said softly, proudly, her eyes closed so they wouldn't get to see her cry, "people think that just because I always seem happy on the outside, I don't have any problems."

"I'm sure you have problems," David said.

"And you think I don't _feel _anything, do you, David?"

"Yes, Benny, of course I do, I—"

"No," she said coldly, opening her eyes. "Don't try to comfort me. I don't need your empty sentiments. You know why people like you say terrible things like that? To keep from _caring_."

David looked at her, devastated. "I care."

"Get out," she said. "Get out."

"Benny, _please_—"

"No!" she screamed, slapping him hard across the face. "No. I don't know who you are! Please! I just—want—to be left alone!"

As David and Snitch shuffled out, shamed, Benny stayed crouched on the hard plastic booth, watching to make sure they had left. Then, she went back to her breakfast. She smiled, drying her tears, and added some milk and sugar to her coffee. It was still hot.

-

"So she cried on you," Jack said.

"Well, yeah."

"And you fell for it?"

"Of course I did. I mean…her voice got all high, and she slapped me…girls do that." David looked at Jack helplessly. "_I _don't know."

"Do you know any real girls who actually _slap _people? Especially now? These are the eighties, Dave. Men hit back now." Jack paused to knock back what seemed like half a glass of beer, and then neatly pocketed a ball. "Your turn," he said, standing up and stretching his arms behind his back.

It was later that same night, and Jack and David were at the Lighthouse Tavern, playing their third game of pool. Or rather, Jack was playing; David was just sort of going along, leaving dents in the felt and getting blue chalk all over his jacket sleeves.

He had been going along a lot, lately, especially with Jack. Because, for some reason that David didn't fully understand, Jack had become his friend—he laughed when David said things that might have been funny, and told him stories about his family, and called him Dave. No one had ever called him Dave before. It was wonderful. And so when David came back from the Ironside with Snitch, twenty minutes before curfew, and Jack asked him if he wanted to go into town again to have a few drinks and maybe play some pool, David didn't hesitate. He just said yes. If Jack had asked him if he wanted to go to the recycling center to sort tin cans for three hours, David would have said yes.

"Well," Jack said thoughtfully, watching David shoot a ball straight off the pool table and into his glass of beer, "maybe we should forget about Miss Kittridge for tonight. Let's talk about something else."

"Like what?"

"Like…homework? The actual rules of eight-ball, which seem to tragically evade you? Dentifrice? I don't know, something."

"Let's talk about your family," said Dave.

So Jack told a story about his older brother Ted, who no one heard from much anymore, as he was doing his best to separate himself from him family legacy as much as possible. But a long time ago, when the family still lived in Central Park East—before Jack was even born—Ted had built treehouses in Central Park.

"He did _what_?"

He built these treehouses in Central Park.

"I didn't know that was _allowed._"

Well, it's not.

"Gee."

One summer when Ted was about nine and a half, he and Chris and Jamie and Boo Boo had been out in the park with their new nanny, Erzsebet, T. Senior and Elinor having sent them all out to get some goddamn fresh air. They were wandering aimlessly by the lake, sucking on dreamsicles, the _mousseline de soie _trim on Boo Boo's seventieth sundress already ruined by the blood from her seventieth skinned knee, when Jamie dared Ted to climb that tree. Except that he didn't, because at three years old he had already adopted his father's way of speaking, so what he said was, in fact, "Climb that goddamn tree, Ted."

"What tree?"

"_That _one."

So he did. Before anyone could even stop him, he shimmied up the enormous Cedar that Jamie had pointed at. Erzsebet held her breath until she saw his blond head poking out of the top branches. Then she did the math (she had been a perfect student at Heidelberg before she accepted this degrading job), found Teddy to be three hundred and fifty feet off the ground, and nearly fainted again.

"Children, don't—" she began, but of course by that time Boo Boo was already struggling in the lower branches, trying to join her brother. That poor sundress.

They came down, eventually, after being bribed, cajoled, and threatened with military school, but even after they were back at home, the damage had already been done. It was _their _tree now.

They came back to it the next day, and the next day, and the next. Ted built a treehouse out of plywood and plastic sheeting, and they sat up there all day, reading Marvel comics and dropping pennies on the people who walked on the paths below. At night, they turned on Chris's Tivoli radio, and Boo Boo danced in her ballet class leotard to the Supremes. People below heard the good-time vibrations of Motown, and took the songs to be a native chants. Stories started circulating about a long-forgotten tribe of Indians inhabiting Central Park, with sharpened teeth and yellow eyes. By the time school started in the fall, Ted was hearing about how one boy had disappeared in Central Park on the Fourth of July, only to turn up in the form of a barely identifiable shrunken head, delivered to his parents along with the Sunday _Times_.

"And what about the treehouse?"

The city found it that fall and tore it down the next day. They decided it had been built be vagrants, not Indians. But Ted kept going back, the next summer, and the next. Every few weeks they'd find the treehouse and tear it down, and the next day he'd find a new tree. He and Chris and Boo Boo and Jamie would sleep out there when the nights got too hot to be inside, and in the morning they'd roll up their sleeping bags and climb down to spend the day in the park. In the warmest part of summer they hardly ever went back home, just to change their clothes and raid the cabinets for soda and candy bars.

"Where were your _parents_ through all of this?"

Their mother, Elinor, a New York Sullivan, summered in Greece.

"And your father? What was he doing?"

Fucking Erzsebet.

"Oh."

But they kept doing it for years—right up until the first summer Ted came back from Caldwell, when he was fifteen. That summer, the tribes of Central Park died out. Ted was nearing thirty now, a successful defense lawyer in the city, already married and with a son on the way. But every once in a while, when the moon was right, he could be found walking through Central park on the way home, looking up at the sky through branches of cedar and oak.

"You're making that part up," David said.

"You're right." Jack drained his glass of beer. "I probably am. Now: what do you say we play some pool?"

-

Whatever confidence David had in his skills as a pool player was destroyed that night. He knew he could never compete with Jack under normal circumstances, but he had always thought that maybe, if Jack was blind, falling-down drunk, so out of it he didn't even know who he was anymore—maybe, David could have beat him then. Or at least the game could have come out in a draw.

But fate didn't even give David that much. He kept on losing, and losing, and losing every game, right up until the moment Jack passed out on the felt.

"Well, Jack," David said thoughtfully, "it's been a fun night. Really, it has. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun. You know…but it's kind of late now, and I have a lot of studying to do, and I'm sure you do too. I don't actually know why I'm talking to you. You can't hear a thing." He paused, staring at Jack helplessly a moment. "Well," he said, pulling ineffectually at Jack's arm, "let's go."

Jack didn't move. He grunted a little, but he didn't move.

Before David could say anything more, he was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps behind him. He looked up, didn't see anything, and then looked down to lock eyes with a skinny kid who looked to be around thirteen. He was wearing a beat-up leather jacket, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, his lank, dust-colored hair falling over his gray eyes, and hanging off him was Rexanne.

"So," she said. "Where's Miss Benny?"

"Oh. Um, hi, Rexanne. Heh."

"David," she said. "This is Spot. Spot, this is David. He's a Caldwell boy."

David reached out the arm he wasn't using to keep Jack from falling off the pool table, and shook hands with Spot. "I didn't know you had a little brother," he said amiably.

Rexanne stared down at the tips of her cowboy boots, shoulders shaking, trying desperately not to laugh. Spot frowned, clenched and unclenched his fist a few times.

"You, ah…" he said at last, "you a friend a' Race's?"

"He's like a brother to me," David said.

"Well, then," Spot sighed, raking a hand through his hair, "I got no issue with you. Rexanne," he said, handing her a quarter, "go buy a song."

Rexanne smiled and walked over to the jukebox, David and Spot watching her as she went. "She's very pretty," David said, trying to make amends.

"She's not, but she's my girl anyway. You know, between men, she's the best thing that's come to me in a while." Spot turned to David, grinning. "Now just you wait," he said. "She'll bend over, look at all the songs, spend a good minute perusin' the merchandise, and then she'll pick _Thunder Road_. Does it every time."

David and Spot waited, listening. Sure enough, a moment later, they heard the song's opening strains. Rexanne slipped off her boots and began to dance, faded dress sawing across her skinny legs. She was graceless and unsuspecting, her bright red hair loose around her shoulders, but she danced better than she waited tables, and when she smiled, she was almost beautiful.

"So I see you've met Jack," Spot said.

"Well…yeah," David said, blushing. He kind of has a habit of, um…"

"Of?"

"…Getting a little bit drunk. Sometimes."

"Jack doesn't get drunk," Spot said. "Jack drinks until he passes out. They're very different things." He paused. "You got any drinkers in your family, David?"

"Oh, um…not really."

Spot smiled. "I figured as much. Look," he said, "you seem like a decent kid, and you're a friend of Race's, who's a friend of mine. And there's no way you're gonna get Jack back up there all by yourself. So, listen, um…" he paused, scratching his head, "why don't you just stay with Rexanne and me?"

"I'd…that would be great," David said.

"I mean, don't make a _habit _of it or anything."

"Of course."

Spot leaned over and slapped Jack's cheek. "Hey, Jacky-Boy."

"Wha…? I don' wanna…"

"Come on. Get up. Time to get up. We're goin' for a little walk."

And then, to David's utter astonishment, Spot grabbed hold of Jack's shoulder and hoisted him up onto his feet. David hurried over and supported Jack on the other side. "Rexanne," Spot called, "go start the car."

David was a little shocked at the efficiency with which Spot handled the whole situation. As they dragged Jack out the front door, David turned and asked Spot if this was the first time he had had to do this.

"First time this month," he said.

"Oh."

Spot lived with his aunt an uncle in a house by the river; after they got there, Spot and Rexanne wished them both goodnight and went up to the master bedroom, leaving Jack and David to shared the sofa bed. It was a cold fall, and they had nothing but a crocheted afghan and a space heater for warmth, but David was still surprised when he woke up at dawn to find Jack curled up next to him, one arm thrown across his chest. He was so close that David could feel the rhythm of Jack's inhalations, and he listened, holding very still as he tried to make their breathing match.

-

A/N: DALTON: An update! She lives!

…Shut up.

DALTON: Yes, it's been more than three months, but the high-class slashfest known as _The Boys of McKinley House _lumbers on like a dinosaur from the Mesozoic.

Isn't he cute? He learned that word from the dinosaur sticker book I got him for Christmas. And this chapter is my Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah present to you. And thank you all for your readership and patience, what with the very vague slash coming so late an all. Rest assured: it gets sordid…er. And we don't see so much of Benny, thank God.

And now, Charlie and I are off to throw a party for Bruce Springsteen.

DALTON/BRUCE: REVIEW!

Te adoro  
Preppie and the Brain.


	8. The Hard Boiled Egg Factory

The Boys of McKinley House

Chapter Eight—The Hard-Boiled Egg Factory

-

When David was fourteen years old and working in the marine life department of Wiedner's Pet Shop on Seventh Avenue, a girl came in at four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and spent nine and a half minutes watching the angelfish in the second-largest tank in the store. She was very small, with china-blue eyes, a pointed nose and chin, and fine, dark hair cut in a blunt Cleopatra bob, held back with a dark green ribbon. As she watched the fish, she hummed a song which David would not hear again for a very long time. When at last he heard it, and found out what it was, he would buy the record play the song over and over again, until he knew every last note in it by heart.

To David, the girl was, for those nine and a half minutes, the most beautiful creature who had ever walked on the face of the earth. The mere idea of talking to her, even making eye contact with her, made him want to die. Chad Bevilacqua, a night student at CUNY who had three girlfriends and looked like Don Johnson, was working as aquarium salesman, the same job David would have later that year, and it was Chad's job to chat up the customers and shill for the different fish tanks and cleaning devices. It was David's job to feed the squid. That afternoon, for the first time since he started working at Wiedner's, David neglected his duties. For those nine and a half minutes, all David could do was watch the girl through the glass of the angelfish tank, and try very hard to look as if he hadn't seen her at all. Whether this worked or not remains unknown, but to this day, David can picture the girl down to the last detail. He can take himself back to that moment, standing in Wiedner's Pet Shop, looking at a face that made his heart stop, while the angelfish—white, yellow, and blue—swam past.

-

When David was fifteen and a freshman in high school, and his sister Sarah was sixteen and a sophomore, their parents went down to Florida for four days to visit his grandfather Murray, who was currently involved in a lawsuit brought against him by a twenty-two-year-old fan dancer named Wanda. While Esther and Mayer were out of town, Sarah, who had not yet discovered communism and was still co-captain of the cheerleading squad, took the opportunity to host the after-prom party at their apartment. At the dance that night, Sarah not only had the distinction of being one of the most popular girls in the room, but also (since she went with Chad Bevilacqua) was the only girl there whose date had a pregnant wife and an apartment in Staten Island. Sarah Jacobs had reached the pinnacle of the high school social structure that night; the world was at her fingertips, and when, three months later, she showed up on the first day of year as the leader of the Young Communists' Club, all of her old friends on the cheerleading squad agreed that it really was a shame she had thrown her reputation away to become a Marxist.

That night, though, Sarah was still the most popular sophomore at P.S. 118. She looked beautiful in her orange chiffon dress, and everybody loved her. The party, which was catered and decorated by Chad Bevilacqua's friend Sergei from Brighton Beach, who may or may not have been a member of the Russian Mafia, was magnificent, and everyone who was invited had a fabulous time. Eight of the nine cheerleaders there—Mindy C., Mindy K., Mary-Frances, Elise, Allison, Janet, Margot and Julie—got frisky with their dates, and many would look back on that night fondly in the years to come. Naomi McCrane, the other co-captain of the cheerleading squad and the girl with the best-looking boyfriend at P.S. 118, ended up with David.

Here is how it happened: it was dark. The music was loud. Naomi's boyfriend, Robbie, had just left the apartment to get a pack of cigarettes from the Korean deli downstairs, and five minutes later David came in to see if the party was over yet. (As soon as the first guests had started to arrive, he had left to spend the evening at the apartment downstairs, where his little brother Les was staying the night with a friend from school. David had just spent the last five hours watching "You Can't Do That on Television" and playing Battleship. He wanted very badly to go home.) David opened the door and stuck his head in, was confronted with the darkness and the sound of Disco Inferno, and knew instinctively that the party was not over, was not even close to being over, and that the party would go on probably for his entire life. He was just about to close the door and resign himself to spending the night with two eight-year-old boys when, without warning, a warm body pressed up against him, and whoever it was put their tongue down his throat. David's first kiss tasted, memorably, like 115-proof vodka, mentholated cigarettes, and carpet.

"Robbie," the voice said, "what took you so long?"

"Naomi?"

"…Robbie?"

"Um."

Naomi squinted, scrutinized his face in the darkness. There was a very long pause.

"_Davey_?"

David could only nod "yes," and while Naomi bent over to throw up in the kitchen sink, David, having realized that nothing in the world was worse than an after-prom party, made a quick getaway. He slammed the door as hard as he could behind him.

-

In the fall of David's sophomore year, he worked for two months on a science project with Karen Livermore, the best science student at P.S. 118. She was very smart, and understood a lot of things that most girls didn't, but even so David didn't think she was all that pretty, or interesting, or even very nice, and he tried to spend as little time with her as possible. Nevertheless, Karen seemed to like him very much, and she asked him out one afternoon while they were working on their presentation board. They went to the movies, sat through the credits, didn't touch, and stopped get something to eat afterwards. David couldn't think of anything to talk about that wasn't related to chemistry, and he thought it must have gone horribly, but Karen asked him out again the next time they saw each other, and again after that. They went on a total of six dates, each one exactly like the one before, until the day of the science fair, when Karen and David's project received second place, right after Arthur Hamill's study of the reproductive behavior of the Eurasion box turtle. Karen never called David again, or went out of her way to talk to him, and when, two weeks later, he saw Karen and Arthur kissing in the frozen novelties aisle of the grocery store in front of a display of vanilla ice-cream cakes, he wished them all the happiness in the world.

-

The preceding pages detail the complete romantic history of David S. Jacobs, and are included to provide a context for the position he found himself in on the morning of Thursday, October 27th, when he woke up in the arms of Jack Kelly, the boy who had once thrown up on his toothbrush.

The position David found himself in was known, in most western countries, as spoon—the larger party resting behind the smaller, body molded to the other's, perhaps with arms wrapped around the smaller boy's shoulders, perhaps with forehead pressed against the nape of the smaller boy's neck. For a shy, confused teenager who just wanted to get an A in biology, waking up in the arms of another boy was never a good thing. But if you happened to be named David S. Jacobs, and your complete romantic history was limited to the fabulous fatuous catalogues of Karen Livermore and Naomi McCrane, and one far-off encounter with the most beautiful girl in the world—then, waking up in a compromising position with a boy who had once thrown up on your toothbrush was more than cause for alarm. It was probably closer, in point of fact, to the end of the world.

David somehow managed to calm himself, after the initial shock of finding Jack's face centimeters away from the back of his neck, so close that he could feel the other boy's hot breath on his skin. David gasped, controlled his breathing, managed not to scream—and then lost all control when he looked over at the digital clock sitting on the end table, between a grocery list and a photograph of Spot standing in front of a Ford pickup, smiling with all his un-brushed teeth.

The clock read 1:03. David was going to die.

"Jack!" he shouted, jumping off of the mattress, then wishing he hadn't when he fell, banging his left knee on the metal stand of the sofa bed, and then standing again, one hand holding up his ankle so he didn't have to put any weight on the injured leg, the other hand being used to hit Jack, to try and wake him up.

"Jack! We have to get up! We have to go! We have to get up! We have class! We—"

But David never got to finish telling Jack what they had to do, because it was at this time that Jack, half asleep, reached out blindly and belted David across the face.

"Thank you," David said, and sat back down on the edge of the mattress.

Jack mumbled something unintelligible and burrowed deeper under the afghan.

David wiped some blood away from his mouth. His bottom lip was bleeding, but for whatever reason, he wasn't bothered by it. In the last twenty-four hours he had consumed alcohol, been inappropriately touched by a WASP, and skipped school for the first time in his life. Somehow a split lip only seemed to be a natural conclusion.

"I hate you, Jack," David said quietly. "You think you can do anything to anybody. Do you even really like me? Do you even want me to be your friend, I mean? Or are you just one of those people who does things to other boys? Because I'm not," he said, and now he looked and Jack lying on the mattress in only his shorts, his warm skin flushed with the sun on it, his dark eyes closed. "Do you even want me to be your friend?" David asked again, and then he began to cry, partly because his lip hurt, and partly because he was missing school, but mostly because no matter how much he hated Jack he wanted to be around him all the time, and looking at him now he almost wanted to be in the same position he had been in when he woke up, and for maybe the first time in his life he couldn't figure out the right thing to do.

He finally settled for lying down again, and trying to go to sleep again. He did not touch Jack, and Jack did not try to touch him.

-

"I'm going to show you the mysteries of St. Helens," were the first words David heard when he woke up again, and for a moment he thought he was still dreaming.

He shielded his eyes from the sun, and looked up at Jack, now fully dressed in a shirt and tie and standing over him, smiling innocently with his beautiful teeth. David sat up a little against the couch cushions. "What time is it?" he managed.

"Four o'clock." Jack grinned. "It's already too late to get back to school in time for newspaper activity. So you have no excuse but to go with me."

"But today we were going to do the exposé on the silverware washing process in the dining hall!"

Jack nodded. "Yes. Dave. I know. It's going to be hard to bounce back from that."

"Well, it _will be!_" said David, almost furious and even madder because he had a feeling Jack was making fun of him.

"Look, Davey, there'll be other stories. I got a million scandals up my sleeve right this minute. Most of them happened in my family. You can have 'em for free."

David didn't say anything, but Jack could tell he was warming.

"But right now," he said, "we're going on a grand tour of the mysteries of St. Helens. It's an all-inclusive tour of the greatest parts of this town, and you've been at Caldwell for almost two months without seeing anything of it. It's time."

"But St. Helens is nothing but a few houses on the edge of a highway."

"_Exactly!_" Jack said. "Have you ever actually _looked around _town, or did you just glance out the window on the way here from the airport? There's the 217 flavor ice cream restaurant and bait shop. There's the lighthouse. There's the aphrodisiacs hut. There's the abandoned train station. There's the river. There's the oil refinery. And there's—best of all, Davey, I bet you don't even know this, my God—there's the hard-boiled egg factory. The last one in all of America."

"But hard-boiled eggs aren't made in a factory," David said incredulously, trying very hard to hide his interest.

"Ah, Davey," said Jack, grinning his crooked grin. "How little you know."

"I don't understand," muttered David.

"Change out of your cowboy jammies," said Jack, "and I'll show you."

And that's exactly what David did.

Jack had packed a lunch for both of them, using, he swore on the soul of all his ancestors may they burn in fiery hell forever, the finest ingredients he could locate in Spot Conlon's kitchen. As so, their provisions consisted of three olive loaf sandwiches on white bread with Miracle Whip, part of a Jell-O salad, seven grapes, soda crackers with grape jelly and peanut butter, and a thermos of Tang.

"Do we really have to eat this?" David asked. "See, there are fast food places all over. We could go to a Wimpie Burger! We could eat real food!"

"No," said Jack. "We could not."

David sulked his way through the lighthouse, the aphrodisiacs hut, the abandoned train station, the oil refinery, and the ice cream place (Jack had a double scoop of lavender-rose hip and curdled cream, and David, who felt very sick from eating half a pound of olive loaf, ordered nothing); it was getting dark, and he was about to ask if they could go back to school when Jack stopped in his tracks, his breath visible in the cold night air. He pointed, and said, in a voice that was as close to impressed as he ever got—"there it is."

David looked up. A great white monolith loomed out of the darkness, spires and stairways going up and up like the battlements of a castle. The lights shone bright; it seemed to glow. The parking lot was empty. From inside could be heard faintly the machinations of a thousand various tools.

"The hard-boiled egg factory?" David asked, when he at last had his breath.

"The hard-boiled egg factory," said Jack.

They snuck in through a back window, and crawled on their elbows along the length of a catwalk forty feet above the factory floor, until they had a clear view of the factory's workings. It was the most amazing thing that David had ever seen. On the floor a hundred men in perfect white space suits were pouring egg white and yolks into long, cylindrical molds, sending them into baths of boiling water, and then pulling them out and onto a conveyor belt, where they cracked them with tiny hammers. The molds shattered like eggshell and revealed beneath it was a perfectly straight cylinder of hard boiled egg, then sliced into thin rounds. It was infinity; the egg went on and on, with no end.

"They sell the egg slices to airlines and cafeterias and things," Jack whispered, "or they used to. Before, the hard-boiled egg factory was the biggest industry in St. Helens, right after the fish canneries."

"And now?" David asked.

"Now, nobody eats hard-boiled egg anymore, the airlines and cafeterias don't buy it. It's bad for the heart, you know."

"But they still make them," David pointed out. "It's night time and there are a hundred men working here. They're making hundreds and hundreds of pounds of egg right now."

"I know," said Jack. "But have you seen hard-boiled egg slices anywhere in the last few years? I mean anywhere?"

David hadn't, even at home, and he admitted it. His father had been eating egg whites only with his breakfasts for a long time; Esther was worried about his heart.

"So the question is," Jack whispered, "where does all the hard-boiled egg go?"

David watched another mold being cracked open, more perfect satiny egg being carefully removed by gloved hands. He couldn't see any of the faces behind the masks. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Neither do I," said Jack. "That's why this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen." He paused, looked at David and smiled his great crooked-toothed grin.

"What?" David said.

"Nothing. Would you like some Tang?"

"I would like that very much. Thank you, Jack."

And so they shared a thermos of Tang, looking out over the factory floor. They stayed for a long time, occasionally talking, most of the time not, and when Jack asked David, much later, if he didn't think it was time to go back to school, David said that they should stay a little longer, and that, after all, even silverware washing exposés could wait.

-

**Author's Note**

DALTON: That was incredibly strange.

Well, I'm rusty.

DALTON: If by 'rusty' you mean that you haven't updated in about seven months, then yes. I guess you are.

Dear readers who have put up with me so long and loved this skimpy little fic long after it outstayed its welcome—I can't thank you enough. I have no idea how to begin. There probably is none. And I can't believe it took me this long to give you an update on the Ballad of Jack and David, but here it is, finally, with more to follow—sooner or later, but hopefully sooner. You are amazing. And I know you probably don't trust me at all, but I will say, even if this fic isn't updated again a while—I'm starting college in a week and things are bound to get weird—I've been thinking abut this story for such a long time, and know so much about what will happen and who will have incredibly graphic gay sex, that I will never, ever abandon it.

I think of it the same way as the Princess Bride. In the immortal words of Westley (I'm paraphrasing): "Death cannot stop this fic. It can only delay it a little."


	9. Badlands

The Boys of McKinley House

Chapter Nine—Badlands

-

At eight fifty-seven in the evening, while Izzy Higgins was in her bedroom watching a PBS documentary about Crick and Watson as she affixed a glow-in-the-dark mobile of the solar system to her ceiling, Specs worked on his paper for Kloppman's AP US history class, Kid Blink flirted with Professor Salt in the physics lab, Snitch and Skittery sat together in the front row of the Columbia Theatre watching _Flash Gordon_, Carrie, the voice of KUKE, played an Albinoni record before signing off the air, Sylvy Golino tried on her coat of armor, Mush talked to his mother on the telephone, Spot Conlon held Rexanne Krakowski in his skinny arms and listened to her wildly beating heart, and Jack and David lay next to each other inside the hard-boiled egg factory, passing a Thermos of grape juice back and forth, Racetrack Higgins was sitting in the Ironside Café, halfway through his fourth slice of lemon meringue pie as he wondered how to start a conversation with the most beautiful girl in the world.

It wasn't that she didn't seem interested. She did. She had smiled at him and made conversation and even, when she had first brought him his menu, stepped on his foot a little, in a manner that he had to perceive as very flirtatious. She was sitting at the counter now, reading a movie magazine and glancing up at him occasionally, eyelids lowered, smiling. What she wanted—it was obvious—was him. And Race, of course, could only stare down at his pie.

She was interested, she knew that—and sweet—and clever—and maybe, he thought, God help him, maybe she might even be tender—but Race's simplest problem was this: how does one start a conversation with the most beautiful girl in the world?

The only avenue open to him seemed to be ordering a fifth slice of lemon meringue pie.

The most beautiful girl in the world walked—it was more like glided—over and set down a fifth plate in front of Racetrack. She was about to walk away; she paused, for just a moment, as Race struggled with all the words that seemed to be stuck in his throat like his mother's vermicelli…_say something_, he thought, _say something funny, say something seductive, say something poetic, say something cool._

So Racetrack tried.

What came out was this:

"You're looking very yellow tonight, Rachel."

_You're looking very yellow tonight, Rachel?_

Racetrack could have killed himself.

Rachel laughed a little uneasily, the most beautiful laugh in the world, and Race knew he had very little time to make sense of something even _he _didn't really understand, somehow turn it into a compliment, and then—oh, then, if he could, could he?—ask the most beautiful girl in the world to go with him to the Halloween dance.

"Yellow?" Rachel said.

"Well—" stammered Race, "I mean—yellow. Your uniform is mustard yellow. I remember the first time I saw you, I wondered how anyone could look so...so pretty in such an ugly color."

"You don't like my uniform?"

"No—no, I love your uniform. I do. And it's yellow."

"Yes, it is."

"And you're holding a piece of lemon pie…and your hair is the color of lemon pie too, I think…and the fluorescent light's shining on you, and it's yellow, too. So you are very yellow tonight."

"I guess I am."

"…And very beautiful."

And here the most beautiful girl in the world blushed in a very pink way, all the way down to the tops of her lovely arms, and she started to turn and walk away and Racetrack _knew _that this was his very last chance—because he could manage to eat five pieces of lemon meringue pie in one night but six was his limit and he knew that not just in his heart but in his stomach—and so he called out, his last opportunity to save the most beautiful girl in the world—

"RACHEL!"

She turned. "…Yes?"

Racetrack took a deep breath. "WouldyouliketogototheHalloweendancewithme?"

And Rachel's face fell, and Race knew he had made an enormous mistake, because of course she didn't like him, of course she had _never _been flirting with him—why had he ever thought such a thing?—she knew about Sylvy just like _everybody _knew about Sylvy, and of course she didn't want anything to do with him, not that she ever would have, anyway. Racetrack stared at his pie and hoped that the most beautiful girl in the world would walk away very quickly.

But when she spoke, her voice was full of softness and regret.

"Oh, Race…I wish I could go with you."

"You do?"

"Yes…but…well, I already promised I'd go with someone else."

Now Racetrack was the one who was surprised. "You are? Really? Who?"

Rachel stared down at her shoes. "Oh, no one," she mumbled.

"No, who? Tell me."

"…Kid Blink."

-

In the library the next day, while he was re-reading _Franny and Zooey _for Denton's class, hoping against hope but somehow feeling very sure that there was a pop quiz looming in his near future, David was startled by a book the size of an encyclopedia being slammed down in front of him and a voice behind him saying, "Spit it out: how many people have you killed?"

The encyclopedia was _The Mammoth Book of Serial Killers, Mass Murderers, Rapists, and Bad Seeds_; the first words David read from it, as he picked it up off his face, were "many people think it is tacky to upholster furniture in human flesh but Ed Gein begged to differ," and the voice belonged to (who else?) Jack—David knew this soon enough because it was the face he saw when he looked up after he had fallen over backwards and out of his chair. Although it was about fifty degrees out, Jack was for some reason wearing a white polo shirt, a white sweater vest, white shorts, and white Keds, and had a white sling on his arm.

"Hi," said Jack. "I'm Ted Bundy."

"Who?" said David.

Jack sighed the sigh he tended to use a lot when David was around, and carefully helped him up. David gathered his books and began to check for broken bones, and Jack said, "Hey, Davey—will you carry my books for me? I would, but I have this darned sling on my arm, and…"

Of course David did. Then he hurried to join Jack on the way back to McKinley.

"Davey," said Jack, "let me ask you something—what do you usually do on Halloween?"

"Well, most years I take my little brother trick or treating around the neighborhood, but last Halloween I went with my sister and a bunch of her friends from Communism Now!, and they gathered up all the homeless people they could find and then took them on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History."

Jack seemed to falter a little at this. "Oh."

"What?"

"Well, I was going to say that Halloween at Caldwell tops whatever you've done in the past, but that actually sounds kind of cool."

"It wasn't that great," David said helpfully. (It _had _been amazing, of course. Lucky and Irma still called him sometimes to ask him questions about dinosaurs.)

"Well, anyway," said Jack, "as you probably know, McKinley gets to hose the Halloween party every year. We've been doing it since they stopped letting us do bacchanal. And the senior prefects always vote on what theme the party will be—last year it was old Hollywood—and as you know I am a senior prefect, and, as you may also know, so is Skittery, and both of us are loudmouthed and opinionated enough to pretty much get our way. So this year, the Halloween party's theme is…"

"The food pyramid?" David asked hopefully.

"_Serial killers,_" said Jack. "Honestly, Dave."

"Oh."

They were passing behind the Theodore Kelly boathouse, one of the many buildings on the Caldwell campus that Jack bore relation to. It cast a long shadow in the late afternoon light, and firs and pines blocking planted on the other side of the pathway blocked out most of the sun. David was struck, suddenly, by the smell of the rain, the darkness this early in the day, and the fact that he was actually standing behind a boathouse—and he was just about to tell Jack all this when he turned around to see the other boy holding a crowbar aloft, staring at him with a manic look in his eyes.

"This is how he did it," said Jack, and seeing the look of fear on David's face he slowly lowered the crowbar, slipping it into his sling like a violinist putting away his bow.

"Jack, what are you _doing? _What the—"

"Ted Bundy," Jack said, as if that explained everything.

David looked at him blankly.

"The most famous serial killer in America? He was on TV every day a few years ago."

"Well, I don't really watch much TV." They were walking again, out of the shadows, and soon they would be in the living room of McKinley; Jack was as happy and genial as usual, but David still felt troubled. There had been something about the look in Jack's eyes when he held the crowbar. It only made things even more complicated than they had been before, if that were somehow possible.

"Well," Jack said, a little apologetically, "Ted Bundy was famous because his victims disappeared from public places—like universities and city streets—places with people all around, but no one ever saw any kind of struggle. They never left a trace. Well, what he did was, he would charm them into coming with him—he'd put on a fake cast and ask them to help him with his books. And then, when they were walking through a dark passage, or while the girl was getting into his car, he'd take out a crowbar, and—"

They were standing outside the front door of McKinley as David stared at Jack, horrified.

"What?" said Jack.

"I just…how do you _know _all this?"

"The newspaper," Jack said, as if he was talking to a very small child, or possibly Racetrack.

David was still at a loss. "But why…_why _do you want to be a serial killer?"

And this was something Jack didn't have an answer for.

"…Jack?"

"Well—" Jack said awkwardly, and David realized that it might be the first time he had ever seen Jack awkwardly do anything. "I mean, Dave—well, come on. What do _you _want to be?"

"A tenured professor at Columbia University. Preferably in one of the graduate schools."

"I mean—what did you want to be when you were eleven?"

"A museum curator."

"Ten?"

"A certified public accountant."

"Nine?"

"A podiatrist."

Jack scratched at the back of his neck in apparent dismay. "…What about when you were in kindergarten?"

"Between the ages of seven and two and a half, it was my greatest aspiration to become a United States postal worker." David looked up at Jack only to see his friend's face frozen in what seemed to be horror.

"What?" David said defensively. "What did _you _want to be when you were in kindergarten?"

"A…_cowboy_," Jack said, as if asking what someone wanted to do when they were five was like asking what the atomic weight of boron was: a simple question that everyone knew the answer to. Or everyone except David, apparently.

"A cowboy?" David asked.

"What's wrong with that?"

"There aren't any cowboys in New York City, Jack," David said pityingly.

"I _know _that!" Jack almost shouted. "I mean I—oh, Jesus, I'm sorry, Dave, just—never _mind._ I don't want to talk about it. Let's go inside."

Jack followed David into McKinley house, shrugging off his raincoat as he came into the entryway. Raindrops splattered out of the creases of his slicker and onto the hardwood floor, and he breathed in deeply of the smoke from the wood ire crackling in the common room. But behind his calm exterior, he was somewhat terrified—because now was the moment when Jack might invite him up to his room so they could study and maybe crack open a couple of beers (although David, of course, always stuck to cream soda), or maybe he would suggest that they go into town to catch a movie before rehearsal, or go to the radio station to annoy Racetrack for a little while, or collect the cans and bottles and scrap from all the bins in each house and take them to the recycling center in town (part of Jack's academic probation ever since the Saturday morning in the beginning of September when he had been discovered sunbathing in the nude on the roof of the Theodore Kelly boathouse)—they could do these or any number of other things that David would never have had any interest in doing at all, if it wasn't for the fact that Jack had asked him to. Or—and this was the more likely option—he and Jack could go their separate ways, and David might go the next ten or twelve or twenty-four hours without seeing him. The prospect was almost too much for him to bear.

David cleared his throat. "So, uh—Jack," he said. "What are your plans for the night?"

"Well, Snitch wants everyone to go to that Charlie Chaplin festival at the Columbia—"

"Oh, I love Charlie Chaplin!"

"But I was thinking of maybe going out to the reservoir tonight with Spot and Rex, you know, listen to some music, smoke a little bud. To be honest, things are getting a little to out of hand right—"

"Smoke a little what?" David asked.

"Huh?"

"Jack, do you mean…drugs? As in "mary jane," "dope," or "the reefer"? Jack, do you mean…_marijuana_?"

Jack smiled his crooked smile. "I suppose I do."

"Jack, did you know that marijuana is a gateway drug that can lead to life-threatening amphetamine and narcotics addictions? Do you?"

"David?"

"Yes?"

"Do you want to come or not?"

"NO!"

Jack looked a little disappointed, David was astonished to note. "Oh," he said. "Okay."

"I mean—" David faltered. "Yes. But—I'm not doing any drugs."

"Okay," Jack said.

"You can't peer pressure me."

"I won't."

"Promise?"

"Yes."

"And we'll be back for curfew?"

"Sure."

"Okay, then. Yes, Jack. I will accept your invitation." David thought he had handled himself rather well.

-

Four hours later, David was sprawled across the backseat of Spot Conlon's Buick, his head sheltered under his arm. There was a huge rip at the shoulder of his blazer, which was now balled up under his head and smelling very strongly of malt liquor. A song from the new Bruce Springsteen album was playing on the car stereo, both the front doors were open, and Spot and Rexanne were kissing on the muddy ground. Jack, the last time that David had seen him, had been walking in knee-deep in water, his pants soaked, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. He was on his fifth or sixth straight bottle of Milwaukee's Best and still was showing no signs of intoxication; Spot had been right when he said that Jack never got drunk. He would just keep drinking like this until he passed out, and he wouldn't be hung over in the morning. David, on the other hand, had had half a bottle of beer and was now completely unable to walk, which was how he had come to by lying in the backseat of Spot's Buick, listening to the radio and trying to ignore the sound of Spot and Rexanne doing whatever they were doing outside his window.

He had thought that maybe if he drank he would stop thinking; that maybe he would stop thinking the thoughts that had been plaguing him for the last few weeks, ever since he had watched Jack up onstage during _Cabaret _auditions, ever since life seemed to have suddenly gotten very, very complicated. But the thoughts didn't go away. Every one of them was there—the only difference was that they came to him much, much slower, so a thought that would have taken him half a second sober now took him half a minute, or maybe it was half an hour. He didn't know if he liked this feeling or not. He wished he could find something where he didn't have to think at all.

The backdoor clicked open and Jack crawled in beside him, trying to be quiet so as not to wake David, who he must have thought was asleep. Spot's car was a huge old fifties model, and the backseat was wide enough for two people to stretch out in, if they pressed close together. Now Jack was stretching out next to David; now Jack was propping his head up, reaching out and brushing some of David's hair behind his ear in a way that almost verged on tenderness; now Jack was leaning over; now Jack was kissing David, messily, drunkenly, on the ear. Jack kissed David's cheek, his forehead, his neck. All through this David pretended to be asleep. Now Jack was resting his head beside David's, leaning forward, and kissing David on the mouth; and now David was thinking, clearly, plainly, _I am in love with Jack Kelly, and there's nothing in the world I can do about it._

And then Jack threw an arm around David's waist and pressed in close, and finally, David Jacobs thought about nothing at all.

-

**Author's Note**

Well, I finally updated.

DALTON: Did you DIE?

Close. I went to college.

DALTON: Ah.

Life has gotten very hectic since the last update. But I assure you, the perfect love of Jack and David still has a very important place in my heart.

DALTON: …ahem.

As does Charlie. And I hope to have the NEXT update—full of serial killers and Halloween parties and romantic interludes and bad dancing and slashy fun—up in the very near future. I'm going to have to, because I promised Dalton that if I don't update within a month I have to buy him the first season of "Fame" on DVD.

DALTON: ((pirouettes by)) FAME! I'm gonna live forever! I'm gonna learn how to fly!

All reviewers get to be exempt from seeing him do that ever again.

DALTON: ((sings)) FAME! People will see me and cry!

…Yes, they certainly will.


End file.
